Retrotechtacular: Voice Controlled Typewriter Science Project In 1958

April 6, 2023 by 17 Comments

Hackaday readers might know [Victor Scheinman] as the pioneer who built some of the first practical robot arms. But what was a kid like that doing in high school? Thanks to a film about the 1958 New York City Science Fair, we know he was building a voice-activated typewriter. Don’t believe it? Watch it yourself below, thanks to [David Hoffman].

Ok, we know. Voice typing is no big deal today, and, frankly, [Victor’s] attempt isn’t going to amaze anyone today. But think about it. It was 1958! All those boat anchor ham radios behind him aren’t antiques. That’s what radios looked like in 1958. Plus, the kid is 16 years old. We’d say he did pretty darn good!

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Rock, paper, scissors game that uses servos to choose one at random for the computer.

Forget ChatGPT And Play Rock-Paper-Scissors With Yourself Instead

April 6, 2023 by 3 Comments

This isn’t like the cool AI everyone’s getting caught up with these days, but we’re sure it will make a fun party gimmick nonetheless.

The premise of [CrazyScience]’s game is really simple, with three servos connected to labels that display rock, paper, and scissors, respectively. The game code is written to pick a label to display at random. Furthermore, an ultrasonic distance sensor detects when the player has moved their hand close to the game, indicating the player has chosen a hand and is challenging the game. The result of the game is decided by the player, so we imagine you could pretend you never lost and no one would know.

It would be cool to see the game support multiple players, keep score, or make sure you can never win. And you’ll probably want to add the randomSeed function in the code too. But that seems like a version two problem.

The only thing left to do is add some AI since that’s all we’re doing nowadays. But maybe you’re the type to enjoy the simple 8-bit pleasures instead. If you ask us though, we’d rather play with friends.

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If They Fire The Nukes, Will They Even Work?

April 6, 2023 by 146 Comments

2022 was a harrowing year in a long line of harrowing years. A brutal war in Europe raised the prospect of nuclear war as the leaders behind the invasion rattled sabers and made thinly veiled threats to use weapons of mass destruction. And all this as we’re still working our way through the fallout of a global pandemic.

Those hot-headed threats raise an interesting question, however. Decades have passed since either Russia or the United States ran a live nuclear weapons test. Given that, would the nukes even work if they were fired in anger?

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Finding Paths With Water Is A-Mazing

April 6, 2023 by 18 Comments

We aren’t sure if it qualifies as fluidic logic, but [Steve Mould] was inspired by a simulation of water flowing through a maze and decided to build some actual mazes and watch water flowing through them. It turns out there are several physical effects in play, and you can see [Steve] discuss them in the video below.

The maze, of course, has to be oriented so that water flows into the top and flows out of the bottom. Without much thought, you’d think that the water just goes to the bottom and then fills up. Eventually, the part that is open at the bottom will have water coming out, right? Turns out it isn’t that simple.

A combination of air pressure and surface tension conspire to make the water do better than expected. Not that it perfectly solves it, but it doesn’t just fill up the entire maze, either. Even more interesting is that once the water has found the bottom, changing the water color will clearly show the path through the maze since nearly all of the new colored water will follow the flow path.

Practical? We can’t think of why. But it is a great think piece on how water flows and what sort of forces can affect it.

[Steve] is no stranger to making water work out algorithms, something called fluidic logic.

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Printing Antennas On Circuit Boards

April 6, 2023 by 19 Comments

Yagi-Uda antennas, or simply “Yagis”, are directional antennas that focus radio waves to increase gain, meaning that the radio waves can travel further in that direction for a given transmitter power. Anyone might recognize an old TV antenna on a roof that uses this type of antenna, but they can be used to increase the gain of an antenna at any frequency. This one is designed to operate within the frequencies allotted to WiFi and as a result is so small that the entire antenna can be printed directly on a PCB.

The antenna consists of what is effectively a dipole antenna, sandwiched in between a reflector and three directors. The reflector and directors are passive elements in that they interact with the radio wave to focus it in a specific direction, but the only thing actually powered is the dipole in the middle. It looks almost like a short circuit at first but thanks to the high frequencies involved in this band, will still function like any other dipole antenna would. [IMSAI Guy], who created the video linked above which goes over these details also analyzed the performance of this antenna and found it to be fairly impressive as a WiFi antenna, but he did make a few changes to the board for some other minor improvements in performance.

The creator of these antennas, [WA5VJB] aka [Kent Britain] is an antenna builder based in Texas who has developed a few unique styles of antennas produced in non-traditional ways. Besides this small Yagi, there are other microwave antennas available for direction-finding, some wide-band antennas, and log-periodic antennas that look similar to Yagi antennas but are fundamentally different designs. But if you’re looking to simply extend your home’s WiFi range you might not need any of these, as Yagi antennas for home routers can be a lot simpler than you ever imagined.

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No Home Cinema Is Complete Without A Motorized Projector

April 5, 2023 by 5 Comments

In the home of the future, everything is automated. Some of us are already there, in dwellings fully tricked-out with IoT and smart home devices. But they don’t somehow look as futuristic as a home in which everything is motorized. We don’t know whether this was the intention, but we certainly get a futuristic vibe from [Sam Baker]’s home cinema projector mount. It’s no mere bracket, instead on command the projector descends from concealment in the ceiling on a custom scissor lift mechanism.

A scissor lift is a simple enough mechanism, but since he was 3D printing one that had to withstand the weight of the projector, it took him a while to get it right. Even the lead screw which drives it is also printed, turned by a stepper motor. As the brains of the unit needn’t be particularly accomplished, an Arduino Nano does the job well enough.

It’s fair to say that his projector isn’t the heaviest of models, but the result glides smoothly down from the ceiling for a perfect home cinema experience. We like it.

Opening Up ASIC Design

April 5, 2023 by 7 Comments

The odds are that if you’ve heard about application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) at all, it’s in the context of cryptocurrency mining. For some currencies, the only way to efficiently mine them anymore is to build computers so single-purposed they can’t do anything else. But an ASIC is a handy tool to develop for plenty of embedded applications where efficiency is a key design goal. Building integrated circuits isn’t particularly straightforward or open, though, so you’ll need some tools to develop them such as OpenRAM.

Designing the working memory of a purpose-built computing system is a surprisingly complex task which OpenRAM seeks to demystify a bit. Built in Python, it can help a designer handle routing models, power modeling, timing, and plenty of other considerations when building static RAM modules within integrated circuits. Other tools for taking care of this step of IC design are proprietary, so this is one step on the way to a completely open toolchain that anyone can use to start building their own ASIC.

This tool is relatively new and while we mentioned it briefly in an article back in February, it’s worth taking a look at for anyone who needs more than something like an FPGA might offer and who also wants to use an open-source tool. Be sure to take a look at the project’s GitHub page for more detailed information as well. There are open-source toolchains if you plan on sticking with your FPGA of choice, though.