If there’s one category among those we see here at Hackaday that has something for everyone, it’s retrocomputing. Spanning everything from relay-based machines that fill a wall through to modern machines with a retro twist, there must be few of us who haven’t seen such a project as been impressed. Our most recent contest challenged you to come out with your best retrocomputing projects, and we’re extremely pleased to say that you didn’t disappoint us. Here are the results, both the outright winners, and the honourable mentions.
As difficult as it may be to believe, it’s not possible to adjust the time on a 2014 Renault Latitude’s in-dash navigation system unless you have an original SD card with valid map data on it. If you loose that card, or never had it in the first place because you’re not the original owner of the vehicle, you’re out of luck.
That is, unless you’re [Rasmus Moorats]. Not willing to pay for an original Renault SD card just for the privilege of adjusting the time on his vehicle’s dashboard, he set out to hack the navigation system so he could fiddle with its parameters manually.
You might think that the end result of this hack is really only interesting if you happen to own a Renault of a similar vintage, and to a point you’d be right. The part that’s worth sticking around for even if you don’t have an applicable vehicle is the fascinating process of poking and prodding at the car’s embedded Linux operating system which [Rasmus] was kind enough to document for us.
There’s a lot of ground covered in the write-up, but the short version is that while the navigation system has the ability to load scripts from the SD card, as designed there are pretty strict limits on what said scripts can actually do. The trick for [Rasmus] was to find a way to break out of the limited sandbox.
After a number of only partially successful attempts, he finally found the solution by using the script’s built-in logging functions to overwrite the operating system’s core_pattern string which is executed whenever a process crashes. By then using a different function of the scripting language to intentionally crash a binary, he was able to execute commands of his choosing, and in turn modify the configuration file that held the time data.
If you’ve ever found yourself trying to hack your way through a locked down embedded Linux system, we’re willing to bet at least a few of the tricks [Rasmus] outlines here could come in handy. As for hacking obstinate in-dash navigation and entertainment systems, it gets even harder on more modern vehicles.
Given the modern trend of interconnecting anything and everything, we have no doubt that somebody sells a blood pressure monitor that will push its measurements out to all sorts of cloud services on your behalf. We’re equally sure that doing so requires you to sign up for some new account or service, and that there may even be a subscription cost hiding in there as well.
Looking to record his vitals on his own terms, [Tomasz Burzy] set out to modify a basic blood pressure monitor so that it would send its data out over WiFi. He succeeds in the end, but as is so often the case around these parts, the journey ended up being just as interesting as the final destination.
Optically detecting which LCD segments are activated.
His initial idea was to tap into the monitor’s PCB with his logic analyzer. He quickly found a test point that let him pull the raw value from the unit’s pressure sensor, and with a little massaging, he even got some code running that turned that into a fair estimation of his actual blood pressure. But it didn’t quite match what the display showed, and doing some research, he found that these monitors generally employ some unknowable Secret Sauce to derive the final result from the raw data.
Efforts to intercept the final number from the device’s main chip before it was sent off to the display driver were stymied by the fact that it was the display driver. The unit was so well integrated, presumably to drive down the cost, that there was a single IC handling essentially all aspects of its operation. So much for the logic analyzer route.
In the end, [Tomasz] took the nuclear option and used a camera mounted to the top of the unit to pull data off the display optically. But instead of a full-fat computer running some computer vision software, he’s able to pull it off on an ESP32-CAM module. How? Because he knows exactly where each segment of the LCD is, he simply needs to check a set array of coordinates in the camera’s image to see if they are lit up or not. This greatly reduces the complexity of the task, and brings it within the capabilities of the lowly microcontroller.
Although we love the idea of developing hacker-friendly medical devices that give up their data without having to jump through so many hoops, we appreciate the effort [Tomasz] put into this, and think it’s a fantastic example for similar reverse engineering efforts.
One of the interesting things about the slow-moving AI apocalypse we seem to be trapped in is watching the knock-on effects reverberate through communities and economies. We’ve seen how — and lamented that — the LLM-driven datacenter build up has increased demand for GPUs, RAM and SSDs directly, and we watched that in turn increase demand for traditional, spinning rust hard drives. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before demand came for the tapes, too. Yes, tapes: good old fashioned “sticky tape and rust”. With AI increasing demand for archival material, Fujifilm has announced they’ll be increasing production by 5x through 2028.
This production increase is specifically targeting about the latest and greatest 10th generation of Linear Tape, Open (LTO) which Fujifilm has produced since its inception. Indeed, Fujifilm has been in the tape storage business for almost as long as we’ve been storing data on magnetic tape, with their first forays into the field dating to the 1950s. The Ultrium10 tapes are available in 30 TB and 40 TB standard sizes, which are advertised as 75 TB and 100 TB based on a perhaps-optimistic 1.5:1 compression ratio. Given it’s already a linear standard and not exactly blazing fast at 400 uncompressed MB/s, there’s no reason not to compress the heck out of data being sent to cold-storage on tape. While not great by modern SSD or HDD standards, those are dizzying numbers if the last tape drive you used was a Datasette.
Still, it shows that the industry is reacting to the same trends that have hackers bringing surplus tape drives into their homelabs. This isn’t a small bet by Fujifilm, with 10 billion yen (about $63 million) at stake.
Automatic cat feeders are a dime a dozen, largely because this is an easy problem to solve. Dry cat food is easy for machines to manipulate, and the electronics needed to accomplish the task to a bare minimum are plentiful and inexpensive. But just doling out food is only easy part of the problem. [Jason] wanted to make sure that his cats actually ate once the food was dispensed so he added a few extra features to this cat feeder.
The main addition to this feeder compared to off-the-shelf models is a weight sensor under the bowl. The feeder metes out a certain amount of food, and then a Raspberry Pi Pico W keeps an eye on the weight of the dish. If it goes down, presumably the cat has eaten all of the food. But just to be sure, an ultrasonic sensor was added beside the bowl to ensure something cat-shaped was there at the same time. There was some issue with this sensor blasting out noise in a cat’s audible range at first, but it seems like that problem has since been solved as well.
The build has a few other perks as well. The hardware has wireless communication ability, so it’s easy to keep an eye on when out and about. It can log data and is much more programmable than others. Like most cat feeders, though, it’ll only work for dry food. For automatically feeding wet food something like this robotic feeder that opens cans and dispenses them at set intervals would be needed.
There’s an old joke about inviting somebody up to your dorm room to ‘look at your etchings’ — but if you’re going to do that, you’d best have some etchings, lest they call your bluff. Even better would be to have prints available, so you might share your hard work with adoring fans. Over on YouTube, [This Designed That] shows building the perfect little etching press so you need never invite anyone to your room again: you can crank out enough prints on this bad boy to hand out your etchings on a street corner!
Crank is the right word, because it’s hand-cranked, with the rollers chain-driven off a separate driveshaft. It works like, well, a roller press: two steel rollers squeeze a platen holding your inked etching and a of paper together to put an image onto. His choice of an off-cut of steel pipe to use as the top roller is inspired, even if he did have to turn it down quite a bit to get an even radius and smooth surface finish. The whole thing is very well made, and all of it hand-machined except for off-the-shelf bearings and the yellow side plates, which were commercially CNC’d.
We also appreciate that [This Designed That] took the time to prove the merit of his machine by showing the press in work, and the resulting prints. We’re not art critics, but we are willing to say this makes a good impression.
[This Designed That] is both printer and machinist, and we’ve seen his print projects before, like using resin prints for foil stamping or a DIY proofing press that seems to share some DNA with this larger project.
The great thing about the modern world is how connected we are. It’s also the worst thing about the modern world, to be honest. [Allan Binder] wanted to give his toddler the very best of that, and escape the worst, with a specially-designed telephone to call Grandma with– and not get scam calls in turn. We’re not going to say his build guide is so thorough a toddler could follow it, but it’s not too far off.
The device is very simple: a commercial ‘retro-style’ handset pairs with an ESP32-S3 over USB. Said ESP32, aside from acting as a USB host, runs a minimal Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) client, which connects via WiFi to a VoIP account the parent has set up. In this case, [Allan] is using Twilio, but there are other internet telephony providers one could use if a Twilio employee once ran over your dog or something.
There are no inbound calls in this setup, so little Timmy isn’t going to be bothered needlessly about import fees on nonexistent packages or his car’s extended warranty. Dialing out is toddler-friendly, too– it’s as simple as mashing an arcade button linked to the ESP32’s GPIO. Each designated contact gets a button with its pre-programed contact, like the speed dial of yore. A really nice touch is the use of illuminated buttons tied to the time-zone of the designated contact: kiddo will learn quick that if the button isn’t lit, it’s not time for phone calls. The phone will actually say so, via a text-to-speech that also announces network errors and the like.
While cardboard box housing the prototype seems a bit flimsy to trust with any toddler we’ve met, but the concept here is very sound indeed. We’ve seen such kid-communication devices before, but this implementation, aside from being more current, has a lot to recommend it.
