Road Apology/Gratitude Emitter Car LED Sign

January 24, 2018 by 71 Comments

Sometimes, when you’re driving, a simple wave when someone lets you in can go unnoticed and sometimes you make a mistake and a simple wave just isn’t enough. [Noapparentfunction] came up with a nice project to say ‘Thanks’ and ‘My Bad’ to his fellow drivers.

The display uses four Max 7219 LED matrix displays, so the total resolution is 32 by 8. [Noapparentfunction] came up with an inspired idea: using a glasses case to hold the LED matrices and Raspberry Pi. It’s easy to get into if necessary, stays closed, and provides a nice finished look. Having little knowledge of electronics and no programming skills, [Noapparentfunction] had to rely on cutting and pasting Python code as well as connecting a mess of wires together, but the end result works, and that’s what matters.

A network cable runs from the glasses case suction cupped to the rear window to another project box under the dashboard. There, the network cable is connected to two buttons and the power. No network information is passed, the cable is just a convenient collection of wires with which to send signals. Each of the buttons shows a different message on the display.

Depending on where you live, this might not be legal, and we’re sure many of our readers (as well as your author) could come up with some different messages to display. However, this is a cool idea and despite [Noapparentfunction]’s admitted limitations, is a nice looking finished product. Also, its name is Road Apology Gratitude Emitter. Here are some other car mod articles: This one adds some lighting to the foot well and glove compartment and this one on the heinousness of aftermarket car alarms.

For Your Holiday Relaxation: The Clickspring Sundial Build Megacut

December 23, 2020 by 7 Comments

The fortunate among us may very well have a bit of time off from work coming up, and while most of that time will likely be filled with family obligations and festivities, there’s probably going to be some downtime. And if you should happen to find yourself with a half hour free, you might want to check out the Clickspring Byzantine Calendar-Sundial mega edit. And we’ll gladly accept your gratitude in advance.

Fans of machining videos will no doubt already be familiar with Clickspring, aka [Chris], the amateur horologist who, through a combination of amazing craftsmanship and top-notch production values, managed to make clockmaking a spectator sport. We first caught the Clickspring bug with his open-frame clock build, which ended up as a legitimate work of art. [Chris] then undertook two builds at once: a reproduction of the famous Antikythera mechanism, and the calendar-sundial seen in the video below.

The cut condenses 1,000 hours of machining, turning, casting, heat-treating, and even hand-engraving of brass and steel into an incredibly relaxing video. There’s no narration, no exposition — nothing but the sounds of metal being shaped into dozens of parts that eventually fit perfectly together into an instrument worthy of a prince of Byzantium. This video really whets our appetite for more Antikythera build details, but we understand that [Chris] has been busy lately, so we’ll be patient.

Continue reading “For Your Holiday Relaxation: The Clickspring Sundial Build Megacut” →

Dealing With A Hacked Brain; Let’s Talk About Depression

August 26, 2020 by 99 Comments

This post is different from normal Hackaday fare. I don’t want to presume anything about you, but I’m pretty sure the story I’m about to share resonates with at least some of you.

I’ve been having a tough time, exacerbated by this age of social distancing. This all crept up on me at first, but as I began to look back on my behavior and moods, I began noticing patterns that I hadn’t noticed before. This is certainly a relevant issue in this community, so let’s talk about mental health, beginning with my own journey.

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Maker Therapy Joins The Fight Against COVID-19

April 21, 2020 by No comments

We love talking about makerspaces here at Hackaday. We love hearing about the camaraderie, the hacks, the outreach, the innovation, everything. Even more, we love seeing all the varying forms that makerspaces take, either in the hacks they create, the communities they reach out to, and especially their unique environments.

Recently, we came across Maker Therapy, a makerspace right inside a children’s hospital. Now, we’ve heard about hospital makerspaces here on Hackaday before, but what makes Maker Therapy particularly unique is it’s the first hospital makerspace that gives patients the opportunity to innovate right in the pediatric setting.

Inspired by patients and founded by Dr. Gokul Krishnan, Maker Therapy has been around for a few years now but recently popped up on our radar due to their unique position on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a makerspace located right inside a hospital, Maker Therapy is in the unique position to be the hospital’s very own rapid prototyping unit. Using 3D printing and other tools, Maker Therapy is able to make face shields and other important PPE right where they are needed the most.

Here at Hackaday, we salute and give our eternal gratitude to all the health care professionals fighting for our communities. Maybe some of your hacks and other designs could be used by initiatives like Maker Therapy? Until then, stay home and stay safe Hackaday. The only way we’ll get through this is together.

Reverse Engineering An Old Bus Display

December 11, 2019 by 14 Comments

When his makerspace was gifted a pair of Luminator LED signs of the sort you might see on the front of a bus, [PWalsh] decided to pull one apart to see what made it tick. Along the way, he managed to reverse engineer its control protocol and replace its original control board with a WiFi-connected Raspberry Pi. Now they can use the LED signs to show whatever they want; no bus required.

As they were designed for automotive use, the signs were wired for 12 volts DC. So the first order of business was fitting it with an AC/DC converter so it could be plugged into the wall. After he measured the display’s current consumption, [PWalsh] estimated it’s maximum energy consumption and determined an old ATX computer power supply was more than up to the task.

With the sign happily running battery-free, he could begin figuring out how to talk to it. Noticing a MAX485 RS-485 converter on the PCB, gave a pretty good idea of what language it was speaking, and with the aid of his trusty oscilloscope, he was able to suss out the baud rate. A cheap USB to RS-485 converter was then wired in between the sign and its control board so he could sniff the data passing over the line.

From there, the final piece of the puzzle was studying the captured data and figuring out the protocol. [PWalsh] was able to identify packet headers and ASCII characters, and pretty soon knew enough about how the sign communicated that he was able to remove the control board entirely and just push text and images to it right from the Pi. He’s even made his framework available for anyone else who might have a similar piece of bus-signage laying around.

Even if you’re not looking to add one of these signs to your lab, this project is a fantastic example of protocol reverse engineering with low-cost tools and simple techniques. We always love to see the process broken down step by step like this, and our hat’s off to [PWalsh] for delivering the goods in a big way.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen these sort of LED signs get the “Internet of Things” treatment, and if you’re content with a somewhat scaled down version, you could always just build your own display rather than waiting on the local public transit vehicle to get parted out.

A Virtual Tour Of The B-17

September 24, 2019 by 96 Comments

The Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” is arguably the most recognizable aircraft of the Second World War. Made infamous by the daring daylight strategic bombing runs they carried out over Germany, more than 12,000 of these four-engined bombers were produced between 1939 and 1945. Thanks to the plane’s renowned survivability in battle, approximately 60% of them made it through the war and returned home to the United States, only to be rounded up in so-called “boneyards” where they were ultimately cut up and sold as scrap. Today there are fewer than 50 intact Boeing B-17s left in the world, and of those, only 11 remain airworthy.

One of them is Nine-O-Nine, a B-17G built in April 7, 1945. This particular aircraft was built too late to see any combat, although in the 1950s she was fitted with various instruments and exposed to three separate nuclear blasts for research purposes. It’s actually not the real Nine-O-Nine either, the original was scrapped after it completed eighteen bombing runs over Berlin. Without a combat record of its own, this bomber was painted to look like the real Nine-O-Nine in honor of its incredible service record of never losing a crewman.

Since 1986, Nine-O-Nine has been owned by the Collings Foundation, who operate her as a living history exhibit. The bomber flies around the United States with an entourage of similarly iconic WWII aircraft as part of the Wings of Freedom Tour, stopping by various airports and giving the public a chance to climb aboard and see the pinnacle of mid-1940s strategic bombing technology. History buffs with suitably deep pockets can even book a seat on one of the scheduled 30-minute flights that take place at every stop on the Tour.

I was lucky enough to have the The Wings of Freedom Tour pass through my area recently, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to experience this incredible aircraft first hand. The fact that I’m equal parts a coward and miser kept me from taking a ride aboard the 74 year old Nine-O-Nine, at least for now, but I made sure to take plenty of pictures from inside this lovingly restored B-17G while it was safely on the ground.

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Supercon CFP Extended By Two Weeks

August 1, 2019 by 6 Comments

Need a bit more time to submit your talk proposal for the 2019 Hackaday Superconference? Okay, but we can only do this once. You now have until August 16th to submit your proposal.

Supercon is the ultimate hardware conference. Take all the best conversations you’ve had about electronics, firmware development, industrial design, art, music, and culture and pack them into three incredible days in Pasadena. That’s the start of what you’ll find at this event. There is no substitute for experiencing it in person.

What makes this so unique is the people who show up. We are forever on the search of people with clever, compelling, delightful, and bizarre stories about hardware creation… and that means you. Yes, you! Supercon is a great place to give your first-ever conference talk. Package up the details of your recent hardware adventures and send them in as a proposal. The biggest mistake we see people make is assuming nobody wants to hear about what’s going on in their workshop or lab. Long talk or short talk, we want to hear your talk!

Take the plunge, the water is warm the so are the soldering irons which run constantly in the Hacker Village that forms during Supercon. There are still tickets available, but of course, speaker receive our undying gratitude and of course, free admission.