Complexity is a funny thing. In prehistoric times, a caveman might float across a lake on a log. That’s simple. But as you add a rudder, a sail, or even a motor, it gets more and more complex. But if you add enough complexity — a GPS and an autopilot, for example, it becomes simple again. The SpaceX Dragon capsule actually docks itself to the ISS. However, the crew on the station can take over manually if they need to. What would that be like? Try the simulation and find out. If you don’t make it on the first, try, [Scott Manley’s] video below might help you out.
This isn’t a flashy Star Wars-style simulator. Think more 2001. Movement is slow and it is easy to get out of control. The user interface is decidedly modern compared to the old Apollo era
Over the last year or so, we’ve seen an explosion in the popularity of cyberdecks — those highly portable and occasionally wearable computers that would make William Gibson proud. A lot of the cyberdecks we see are based on NUCs or the Raspberry Pi and are essentially post-apocalyptic DIY laptops. But what if you want to play with microcontrollers on the go? Do you really need traditional computing power?
One of the biggest hurdles in portable microcontrollering is getting HID access so you can communicate with a keyboard. Flip open cyberDÛCK and you’ll find two ItsyBitsy M4s — one being used as the USB host, and the other controls the display and is meant to be programmed. To get the keyboard input across, [kmatch98] adapted a MicroPython editor to take input from UART. Waddle past the break to check out the sprite demo, and stick around to see [kmatch98] discuss the duck in detail.
We all have our new and interesting challenges in lockdown life. If you’ve had to relocate to ride it out, the chances are good that even your challenges have challenges. Lockdown left [Kanoah]’s sister in the lurch when it came to feeding her recently-adopted pet rat, so he came up with a temporary solution to ensure that the rat never misses a meal.
Most of the automated pet feeders we see around here use an auger to move the food. That’s all fine and good, but if you just need to move a singular mass, the screw seems like overkill. [Kanoah]’s feeder is more akin to a pellet-pushing piston. It runs on a Metro Mini, but an Arduino Nano or anything with enough I/O pins would work just fine. The microcontroller starts counting the hours as soon as it has power, and delivers pellets four times a day with a servo-driven piston arm. [Kanoah] has all the files up on Thingiverse if you need a similar solution.
There many ways of solving the problem of dry pet food delivery. Wet food is a completely different animal, but as it turns out, not impossible to automate.
It goes without saying that we love to see all the clever ways people have come up with to populate their printed circuit boards, especially the automated solutions. The idea of manually picking and placing nearly-microscopic components is reason enough to add a pick and place to the shop, but that usually leaves the problem of feeding components to the imagination of the user. And this mass-production-ready passive component feeder is a great example of that kind of imagination.
Almost every design we’ve seen for homebrew PnP component feeders have one of two things in common: they’re 3D-printed, or they’re somewhat complex. Not that those are bad things, but they do raise issues. Printing enough feeders for even a moderately large project would take forever, and the more motors and sensors a feeder has, the greater the chance of a breakdown. [dining-philosopher] solved both these problems with a simple design using only two parts, which can be resin cast. A lever arm is depressed by a plunger that’s attached to the LitePlacer tool, offset just enough so that the suction cup is lined up with the component location on the tape. A pawl in the lower arm moves forward when the tool leaves after picking up the part, engaging with the tape sprocket holes and advancing to the next component.
[dining-philosopher] didn’t attack the cover film peeling problem in his version, choosing to peel it off manually and use a weight to keep it taut and expose the next component. But in a nice example of collaboration, [Jed Smith] added an automatic film peeler to the original design. It complicates things a bit, but the peeler is powered by the advancing tape, so it’s probably worth it.
Binary clocks are a great way to confuse your non-technical peers when they ask the time from you — not that knowing about the binary system would magically give you quick reading skills of one yourself. In that case, they’re quite a nice little puzzle, and even a good alternative to the quarantine clocks we’ve come across a lot recently, since you can simply choose not to bother trying to figure out the exact time. But with enough training, you’ll eventually get the hang of it, and you might be in need for a new temporal challenge. Well, time to level up then, and the Cryptic Wall Clock built by [tomatoskins] will definitely keep you busy with that.
Diagram of the clock showing 08:44:47
If you happen to be familiar with the Mengenlehreuhr in Berlin, this one here uses the same concept, but is built in a circular shape, giving it more of a natural clock look. And if you’re not familiar with the Mengenlehreuhr (a word so nice, we had to write it twice), the way [tomatoskins]’ clock works is to construct the time in 24-hour format by lighting up several sections in the five LED rings surrounding a center dot.
Starting from the innermost ring, each section of the rings represent intervals of 5h, 1h, 5m, 1m, and 2s, with 4, 4, 11, 4, and 29 sections per ring respectively. The center dot simply adds an additional second. The idea is to multiply each lit up section by the interval it represents, and add the time together that way. So if each ring has exactly one section lit up, the time is 06:06:02 without the dot, and 06:06:03 with the dot — but you will find some more elaborate examples in his detailed write-up.
Thanks to the ESP8266 and the ESP32, we’ve seen an explosion in DIY home automation projects recently. When it only takes $3 and a few lines of code to bring your gadgets onto the network, that’s hardly a surprise. But hacking bare ESP modules onto devices will only get you so far. Eventually you’ll probably want to put together a slightly more mature home automation system, and that’s where things can get a little tricky.
Which is why [Alfredo] created the Maisken Homelay. This device is a one-stop-shop for your home automation needs that leverages the power of the ESP32. With the microcontroller slotted into this compact PCB, you’ll be able to trigger four relays for your high current or AC loads, and still have 8 GPIOs and the I2C bus for expansion. All while retaining compatibility with existing open source projects like Home Assistant and ESPHome.
What really sets this project apart is the attention to detail. [Alfredo] has included a HLK-PM01 power supply on the board which takes mains voltage and brings it down to 5 VDC for the ESP32, so won’t need a separate power cable. He’s also taken the time to add isolation slots to separate the potential high-voltage connected to the relays from the rest of the board, added current and thermal fuses for protection, and peppered the board with screw terminals so you can easily connect everything up.
Sure you could get a simple relay board shipped to your door for a few bucks from the usual suspects. But it’s not going to offer the kind of quality of life and safety features that the Maisken Homelay has. There’s even a 3D printed enclosure available to help tidy things up.
We love the world of audiophiles here at Hackaday, mostly for the rich vein of outrageous claims over dubious audio products that it generates. We’ve made hay with audiophile silliness in the past, but what we really like above that is a high quality audio project done properly. It’s one thing to poke fun at directional oxygen free gold plated USB cables, but it’s another thing entirely to see a high quality audio project that’s backed up by sound design and theory to deliver the best possible listening. [Davide Ercolano]’s transmission line speakers are a good example, because he’s laid out in detail his design choices and methods in their creation.
Starting with the Thiele-Small parameters of his chosen driver, he simulated the enclosure using the Hornresp software. As a 3D-printed design he was able to give it paraboloid curves to the convoluted waveguide, making it a much closer approximation to an ideal waveguide than a more traditional rectangular design. In the base is a compartment for an amplifier module, with additional Bluetooth capability.
We’d be curious to know how well 3D printed plastic performs in this application when compared for example to something with more mass. However we like these speakers a lot; this is how a high quality audio project should be approached. We’ve delved into speakers more than once in the past, but if you’re looking for something really unusual then how about an electrostatic?
