Encoding NTSC With Your Hands Tied

December 25, 2022 by 10 Comments

Generally, when trying to implement some protocol, you are constrained by your hardware and time. But for someone like [EMMIR], that’s not enough. For example, NTSC-CRT is a video signal encoding/decoding simulator with no hardware acceleration, floating point math, or third-party libraries. Just basic C.

While NTSC has officially gone dark in America, people still make their own ATTiny-powered transmitters. NTSC is a bit of a strange standard and is sometimes referred to as never-twice-the-same color, but it does produce a distinct look.

That look is what [EMMIR] was going for. It encodes a message in a ppm format into NTSC and then back in ppm with some configurable noise. It can do this in real-time as an effect in [EMMIR’s] engine or on a rendered image via a CLI. It looks incredible, and there’s something very satisfying. There’s a video after the break showing off the effect. The code is pretty short and easy to read.

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The Spit-Detecting USB Flash Drive Is Nearly Here

December 25, 2022 by 17 Comments

Regular readers may recall that security researcher and general open source hardware fanatic [Walker] has been planning a rather unusual flash drive for some time — one that will only show its contents if the user makes sure to lick their fingers before plugging it in. We’re pleased to report that theory has recently given way to real hardware, and the Ovrdrive “self-destructing” flash drive is now a step closer to reality.

The last time we checked in with [Walker], he hadn’t yet put any hardware together, though he was fairly sure what components he would need and how it would all go together. This was assisted somewhat by the fact that USB flash drives are such a ubiquitous piece of tech, making their principle parts plentiful and fairly well documented. As explained in the video below, all you really need to spin up your own flash drive is the USB connector, the controller chip, and a nice slab of flash memory for it to access. Though naturally you’re on your own for spit detection.

The build video has some gorgeous camera work.

What we especially like about this project is that [Walker] is releasing the whole thing as open source hardware. So even if you’re not interested in the whole lick-for-access feature, you’ve still got a boilerplate flash drive design to build on. We haven’t seen a lot of DIY projects tackle USB Mass Storage previously, and perhaps this design can change that.

But of course, only if the thing works. According to the video after the break, [Walker] seems to have hit a snag with this revision of the hardware. While it enumerates as a storage device when plugged into the computer, the operating system claims its capacity is zero. He thinks there might be a swapped trace between the controller and flash chip to blame, so hopefully he can get things sorted out before too long. We’ve been covering this project since the summer, and are eager to see it cross the finish line.

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Non-Replaceable Battery? Not If This Proposed EU Law Passes!

December 24, 2022 by 104 Comments

A disturbing trend in consumer electronics has been a steady disappearance of replaceable batteries on our devices. Finding a mobile phone with a swapable battery is a struggle, and many other devices follow the trend by sealing in a Li-Po cell. The result is an ever-shorter life for electronics, and a greater problem with devices going to recycling or worse still, landfill. Hope is at hand though, thanks to a proposed European Union law that would if passed make batteries in appliances “designed so that consumers can easily remove and replace them themselves“.

In case any readers in the rest of the world wonder what it has to do with them, the EU represents such a huge market that manufacturers can neither ignore it, nor in most cases afford to make separate EU and rest-of-world versions of their products. Thus if the EU requires something for sale in its territories, in most cases it becomes the de facto norm for anything designed to be sold worldwide. We’ve already seen this with the EU’s right to repair legislation, and while we have not doubt that manufacturers will do their best to impede this new law we don’t think they will ultimately prevail.

Via 9to5Mac.

A Dungeon Master With A Thermal Printer

December 24, 2022 by 30 Comments

The thermal printer is ubiquitous in today’s world, mostly found whenever we have to get a receipt from somewhere. They’re cheap, fast, and easy to use. Not only that, though, but as [Daniel] found out, they’re also pretty straightforward to re-program and use for other things than a three-foot-long receipt from a drug store. He’s adapted them to serve as a key tool of the dungeon master in his D&D games.

While he has adapted the most common thermal printer standard, the Epson Standard Code, the real fun of this project is in the user interface. He’s made it possible to build templates and other D&D-oriented sheets quickly via HTML, so the dungeon master can print out character sheets, items from the game, maps, or anything else they might possibly need at the time. It’s all highly configurable to whatever needs arise, and the interface works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

All of the project code is located on Daniel’s GitHub page for anyone looking to try this out. Most thermal printers use this standard too, so cheap ones can easily be found and put to use as long as a roll of thermal paper is available. If the feel of thermal paper is bringing up some childhood nostalgia, it could be because you had the Game Boy Printer as a youth and are looking for ways to recapture that thermal printer magic.

Drone Rescue Uses VHS Tape And Careful Planning

December 24, 2022 by 9 Comments

If you regularly fly your drones outdoors, you’ve probably worried about getting your pride and joy stuck in a big tree at some point. But flying indoors doesn’t guarantee you’ll be safe either, as [Scott Williamson] found out. He once got his tiny 65 mm Mobula 6HD quadcopter stuck in a roof beam at an indoor sports complex, and had to set about a daring rescue.

The first job was recon, with [Scott] sending up another drone to survey the situation. From there, he set about trying to prod the stuck quadcopter free with a improvised lance fitted to the front of a larger drone. But this ended up simply getting the larger bird stuck as well. It eventually managed to free itself, though it was damaged severely when [Scott] caught it as it fell. As told to Hackaday, [Scott] thus decided he needed to build a mock-up of the situation at home, to help him devise a rescue technique.

In the end, [Scott] settled on a grappling hook made of paperclips. A drone lofted a long length of VHS tape over the roof beam, and he then attached the grappling hook from ground level. The VHS tape was then used to reel the hook up to the rafters, and snare the drone, bringing it back down to Earth.

It took some perseverance, but [Scott] ended up rescuing his tiny drone from its lofty prison. The part we love most about this story, though, is that [Scott] planned the recovery like a heist or a cave rescue operation.

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A radio with a white front grate and wood edges sits on a grey surface. Next to the radio are small white disks with colorful edges reminicient of microdisc-sized records. A yellow-ringed disk sits on the radio. The handwritten title says, "Summer of 2011; Holidays in Barcelona"

Spotify Player Brings Back Physical Media

December 24, 2022 by 21 Comments

Digital music has made keeping all your tunes with you a lot more convenient, but have we lost something with dematerialization? [Jordi Parra] felt that there was something lacking with the digital music experience and designed a Spotify player with a tactile interface.

Specific playlists are selected via small RFID tags that look like a cross between a MiniDisc and a vinyl record. As this is a prototype, an Arduino reads the RFID tag, but needs a computer to actually play the Spotify playlist. Future iterations could include an integrated speaker and run libspotify to create a self-contained device.

While there is still work to do for a fully seamless experience, we love the details in the industrial design of this project. Clean simple lines and a combination of wood and more modern materials make this feel like a timeless piece of tech. Definitely check out the full photo gallery including shots of the really impressive packaging.

Want more digital music with a tactile interface? Check out this MP3 Player Shelf or a Simple Internet Radio Transplant.

Blinky Project Is 6502s All The Way Down

December 24, 2022 by 19 Comments

Virtually any platform you might find yourself programming on has some simple method of running a delay. [Joey Shepard] got rather creative on a recent project, though, relying on a rather silly nesting method that we’re calling 6502s All The Way Down.

The project in question was a simple PCB that was shaped like a robot, with blinking LED eyes. Typically, you’d simply reach for the usual sleep() or delay() function to control the blink rate, but [Joey] went off-piste for this one. Instead, the PIC32 on the board runs a 6502 emulator written in MIPS assembly. This emulated 6502 is then charged with running a further 6502 emulator coded in 6502 assembly, and so on, until there’s 6502 emulators running six-deep on the humble microcontroller. The innermost emulator runs a simple program that blinks the LED eyes in a simple loop. With the overhead of running six emulators, though, the eyes only blink at a rate of roughly once every two seconds.

It’s an amusing and complicated way to write a blink program, and we applaud [Joey] for going to all that trouble. We imagine it was a great way to learn about programming the PIC32 as well as emulation in general. Meanwhile, if you’re working on your own emulator feats, be sure to let us know!