Congratulations Low-Power Winners

April 13, 2023 by 13 Comments

Congratulations to the winners of the 2023 Hackaday.io Low Power Contest! We challenged you to show us how much you could do with how little, and you did not disappoint. Our judges have put their heads together, and thanks to Digi-Key, our contest sponsor, the top three entries will be taking home a $150 gift certificate for yet more hacking supplies.

We saw a great diversity of ideas here, all on the low-power theme. So without further ado…

The Prize Winners

[Christoph]’s Ultra Low Power RF-Sensor arose out of necessity. Having just repaired a shower drain, he couldn’t be sure that it wouldn’t start leaking again at some point in the future, but couldn’t go ripping up the floor under the shower tray every week to check. He needed a remote moisture sensor that would do the job for a long time with no intervention.

This superb solution combines an Atmel ATmega328P, an HDC1080 humidity sensor, a 433 MHz radio transmitter, and an RTC to keep power consumption super-low when everything else is shut down. Idling at 600 nA total most of the time, taking a reading every 15 minutes, this device should last for 12 years, and it’s been installed and running for five so far, so we’d say that it’s already proven itself very worthy of taking home the prize here.

[BleakyTex]’s Compact, low-power Geiger counter is absolutely the lowest power Geiger counter we’ve ever seen and maybe also the cutest. With the ambitious goal of running up to two years on two tiny LR44 batteries and a proven runtime of about six months by now, this is the radiation detector you can take with you every day, should you need to. The key is a custom HV section that’s designed for efficiency and the screen – even today, it’s still hard to beat the low power consumption of the humble LCD screen. All this, and it still makes those satisfying clicks when it’s enabled. [BleakyTex] says he might make a kit from this, and we absolutely hope he does!

[mircemk]’s Microwatt Pulse Motor took one of our suggestions in the announcement of the contest and ran with it. This eight-pole handmade electric motor doesn’t actually do anything other than spin, but it does that when hooked up to a literal potato. Pulling around 40 mA at 600 mV, it can easily run on solar power with enough power left over to charge up a battery for when the sun doesn’t shine. All of this is made with extremely simple circuitry and parts scavenged from old relays with a sewing needle held up by a magnet for the bearing. This is pure ingenuity and a sweet low-power demo.

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Square-Wheeled Bike Is Actually An Amazing Tracked Build

April 13, 2023 by 31 Comments

The invention of the wheel is considered one of the crowning achievements of early humanity. Squares don’t roll, after all. [The Q] decided to build a square-wheeled bike anyway, with a neat tracked setup that makes for an awesome visual gag.

The wheels are made out of C-angle steel, making them both stout and incredibly heavy. While they don’t really need the additional structure for strength, they feature spokes which mount a central hub for attaching the “wheels” to a bicycle axle. The squares aren’t designed to roll, though. Instead, they are fitted with gears and rollers, upon which a track made of bicycle chain and tires is fitted. When the rider pedals, this turns the track, propelling the bike along. Cleverly, the track mechanism is neatly hidden by some framing, confusing passers-by.

The riding experience is noisy, thanks to the tracks. There’s also plenty of rolling resistance. It’s unlikely bikes like these will become mainstream transport anytime soon, nor will you see them at the velodrome. Regardless, it’s certainly a great way to turn heads at the park.

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Tinkercad Gets A Move On

April 13, 2023 by 22 Comments

Going to the movies is an experience. But how popular do you think they’d be if you went in, bought your popcorn, picked your seat, and the curtain would rise on a large still photograph? Probably not a great business model. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video is worth at least a million, and that’s why we thought it was awesome that Tinkercad now has a physics simulator built right in.

Look for this icon on the top right toolbar.

It all starts with your 3D model or models, of course. Then there’s an apple icon. (Like Newton, not like Steve Jobs.) Once you click it, you are in simulation mode. You can select objects and make them fixed or movable. You can change the material of each part, too, which varies its friction, density, and mass. There is a play button at the bottom. Press it, and you’ll see what happens. You can also share and you have the option of making an MP4 video like the ones below.

We, of course, couldn’t resist. We started with a half-sphere and made it larger. We also rotated it so the flat side was up. We then made a copy that would become the inside of our bowl. Using the ruler tool, we shaved about 2 mm off the length and width (X and Y) of the inner sphere. We also moved it 2 mm up without changing the size.

Using the alignment tools, you can then center the inner piece in the X and Y axis. Change the inner color to a hole and group the objects. This forms a simple bowl shape. Then we moved the workplane to a random part of the inner surface of our bowl and dropped a sphere. Nothing complicated.

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A first-generation car phone connected to a piece of prototype board with a BlueTooth module

Custom Bluetooth Adapter Brings 1990s Car Phone Back Online

April 13, 2023 by 20 Comments

[Jeff Lau]’s Mitsubishi 3000GT comes with all the essential features you’d expect in a fancy sports car from 1993: pop-up headlights, movable spoilers, and a fully-functional telephone handset in the center console. The phone was fully functional until North America’s first-generation AMPS cellular network was shut down back in 2008, since then, it hasn’t done much but show “NO SVC” on the display. That is, until [Jeff] decided to build a Bluetooth adapter that lets it connect to a modern smartphone.

The easy solution would have been to simply connect the handset’s speaker and microphone to a standard Bluetooth headset, but that would have destroyed the 1990s aesthetic it had going on. So what [Jeff] did instead was construct a plug-in module that hooks up to the phone’s base station in the trunk and communicates directly with all the existing systems. That way, the phone works in exactly the same way it always did: the radio is automatically muted during calls, the buttons on the steering column work as expected, and you can even dial and store numbers using the buttons on the handset.

A car phone base station and wiring in the trunk of a Mitsubishi 3000GT
No modifications required: the BlueTooth module is connected using the factory-installed cabling

It took a lot of reverse-engineering to figure out the technical details of the DiamondTel Model 92 that came with the car as a factory option. [Jeff] helpfully documented all of his findings on the project’s GitHub page, making it easy for anyone with a similar system to implement their own upgrades. The main components of the upgrade kit are a BM62 Bluetooth module that connects to a modern phone, a PIC18F27Q43 microcontroller to implement the car phone’s interface and menus, and several analog chips to process the audio. All of these are mounted on a piece of prototype board and housed in a standard plastic enclosure that neatly fits on top of the existing equipment in the trunk.

While the hardware mod is a pretty neat job already, the real strength of this project is in the software. [Jeff] worked hard to implement all relevant features and mimic the original interface as much as possible, even using 1G phone test equipment to simulate incoming calls from the long-gone network. He also added menu features to enable Bluetooth pairing, use voice assistants, and even play games including versions of Snake and Tetris stripped down to match the handset display’s constraints.

As classic phone conversions go, this is definitely one of the most impressive. [Jeff]’s extensive documentation should come in handy if you’ve got a similar model, but if you don’t, there’s still plenty of ways to connect modern electronics without defacing your classic ride’s interior.

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What Can You Do With Discarded Fish Aggregation Devices

April 13, 2023 by 21 Comments

Often we bring you projects at the end of their trajectory so that you can marvel at a job well done, but sometimes we point you instead to the start of the story. Such is the case with [Brett Smith]’s investigation of discarded fish aggregation buoys, referred to as FADs. These 700-plus dollar devices are deployed in the ocean in the thousands by commercial fishing fleets, and most are not recovered. He’s looking at them from the point of view of re-using their technology in the marine conservation business.

His progress has been documented in a series of short YouTube videos, starting with an introduction that we’ve placed below the break. So far he’s gone on to a complete teardown, and then a detailed look at the PCB. Inside they have a solar charger for a bank of NiCd cells, an echo sounder, a GPS receiver, and an Iridium satellite modem allowing the device to phone home. There’s certainly plenty in there to experiment with, including a few slightly exotic parts, so keep an eye on his channel as we’re sure to see more.

These devices have never made it to Hackaday before, but we have seen an echo sounder on a surfboard.

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Autopsy Of A Drifting Thumbstick Reveals All

April 12, 2023 by 34 Comments

Analog sticks have become a core part of modern video game controllers. They also routinely fail or end up drifting, consigning expensive controllers to the garbage. [sjm4306] recently did a repair job on an Oculus VR gaming controller with drifting analog sticks, and decided to do an autopsy to figure out what actually went wrong.

A microscope reveals gouges in the resistive material, caused by the metal contacts inside the analog stick. This happened via regular use.

The video starts by taking apart the analog joystick itself by prying off the metal case. Inside, we get a look at the many tiny individual components that make up a modern thumbstick. Of most interest, though, are the components that make up the potentiometers within the stick. Investigation revealed that the metal contacts that move with the stick had worn through the resistive coating on the thin plastic membrane in the base of the joystick, creating the frustrating drift problem.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Analog sticks in modern controllers could be manufactured with higher-quality components that don’t wear so easily. After all, it’s hard to imagine a 90s video game controller wearing out as fast as this modern Oculus unit. But everything is built to a price, at the end of the day, and that’s just how it goes. Video after the break.

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There’s Cash In Them Old Solar Panels

April 12, 2023 by 82 Comments

The first solar panels may have rolled out of Bell Labs in the 1950s, with major press around their inconsistent and patchy adoption in the decades that followed, but despite the fanfare they were not been able to compete on a price per kilowatt compared to other methods of power generation until much more recently. Since then the amount of solar farms has increased exponentially, and while generating energy from the sun is much cleaner than most other methods of energy production and contributes no greenhouse gasses in the process there are some concerns with disposal of solar panels as they reach the end of their 30-year lifespan. Some companies are planning on making money on recycling these old modules rather than letting them be landfilled. Continue reading “There’s Cash In Them Old Solar Panels” →