Life At CERN Hack Chat

February 27, 2023 by No comments

Join us on Wednesday, March 1st at noon Pacific for the Life at CERN Hack Chat with Daniel Valuch!

You know the story — work is just…work. The daily grind, the old salt mine, the place where you trade your time and talent for the money you need to do other stuff in the few hours you’re not at work. It’s not the same for everyone, of course, but chances are good that just getting through the day is a familiar enough experience even for someone who’s currently working his or her dream job.

We’re going to go out on a limb here a bit, but it really seems like working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), has got to be a dream gig for almost any engineer. CERN is the top place in the world for particle physics research and home to such ludicrously large machines as the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The facilities and instruments at CERN attract tens of thousands of researchers from all over the world every year who produce multiple petabytes of data; perhaps not coincidentally, it’s also the place where Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web. Thanks, Sir Tim!

join-hack-chatTo say that being an electrical engineer at CERN might be a little like dropping a kid off at a combination candy store/bouncy house/petting zoo is probably not an understatement. When the biggest of Big Science is always on the menu, it must be hard to focus on this cool project or that new instrument. Then again, we’re just guessing — maybe it’s all still “just work.” Luckily, we found someone to ask: Daniel Valuch, currently an electrical engineer who is rapidly closing in on 25 years at the fabled institution.

You’ll recall Daniel from some of his side projects, like the most accurate pendulum clock in the world, or his super-clicky pseudorandom number generator. He’s also teaching at the university level, and we’ve seen him give back to the community with his work for the “ZENIT in Electronics” contest, an annual STEM event that’s currently in its 39th year of inspiring students. Daniel is going to stop by the Hack Chat so we can pick his brain about what it’s like to work at CERN, what kind of projects he’s worked on, and what a career in Big Science is all about.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, March 1 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

[Featured image: CERN, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

Floppy-8 Is A Tiny PC In A Floppy Drive

February 27, 2023 by 1 Comment

At first sight, Floppy-8 is simply a LattePanda based PC built into the shell of a external vintage floppy drive. Indeed, it’s a very nicely executed LattePanda PC in a floppy, and we’re impressed by it. What turns it from a nifty case mod into something a bit special though, is the way creator [Abraham Haskins] has used floppy-like cartridges in the original floppy slot, as a means of loading software.

The cartridges started out as PCBs in the shape of a floppy with an SD socket on their bottom, and progressed to USB drives on 3D printed cartridges and finally and simplest of all, the same 3D printed cartridges with micro SD cards embedded in their leading edges. All this was necessary to get them thin enough to fit into the existing disk slot — if dimensions weren’t a concern, you could enclose various USB devices into printed cartridges. A script on the computer looks for new card insertion, and runs the appropriate autostart.sh script on the SD card if it finds one. If you don’t need the “disks” to fit into an existing slot, you could print them larger and embed

Beyond the cartridges, the PC itself is assembled on a 3D printed frame inside the case. It’s controlled via Bluetooth, with a pair of knock-off NES controllers for games and an Amazon Fire remote for media. We particularly like the idea of weighting the controllers with ball bearings to give them a little heft.

The LattePanda gives the Raspberry Pi a run for its money in these applications. We particularly liked this portable Macintosh.

Laptop Motherboard? No, X86 Single-Board Computer!

February 27, 2023 by 47 Comments

Sometimes a Raspberry Pi will not cut it – especially nowadays, when the prices are high and the in-stock amounts are low. But if you look in your closet, you might find a decently-specced laptop with a broken screen or faulty hinges. Or perhaps someone you know is looking to get rid of a decent laptop with a shattered case. Electronics recycling or eBay, chances are you can score a laptop with at least some life left in it.

Let’s hack! I’d like to show you how a used laptop motherboard could be the heart of your project, and walk you through some specifics you will want to know.

And what a great deal it could be for your next project! Laptop motherboards can help bring a wide variety of your Linux- and Windows-powered projects to life, in a way that even NUCs and specialized SBCs often can’t do. They’re way cheaper, way more diverse, and basically omnipresent. The CPU can pack a punch, and as a rule PCIe, USB3, and SATA ports are easily accessible with no nonsense like USB-throttled Ethernet ports.

Continue reading “Laptop Motherboard? No, X86 Single-Board Computer!” →

Compact Ultrasonic Holographs For Single Step Assembly Of Matter In 3D

February 27, 2023 by 7 Comments

Creating three-dimensional shapes from basic elements or even cells is an important research topic, with potentially many applications in the fields of medicine and general research. Although physical molds and scaffolding can be used, the use of ultrasonic holographs is in many ways preferable. Using ultrasonic sound waves into a liquid from two or more transducers shaped to interact in a predetermined manner, any particulates suspended in this liquid will be pushed into and remain in a specific location. Recent research by [Kai Melde] and colleagues has produced some fascinating results here, achieving recognizable 3D shapes in a liquid medium.

These are some of the most concrete results produced, following years of research. What distinguishes ultrasonic holography from light-based xolography is that the latter uses photon interference between two light sources in order to rapidly 3D print an object within the print medium, whereas ultrasonic holography acts more as a ultrasonic pressure-based mold. Here xolography is also more limited in its applications, whereas ultrasonic holography can be used with for example biological tissue engineering, due to the gentle pressure exerted on the suspended matter.

For ongoing medical research such as the growing of organs (e.g. for transplantation purposes), scaffolding is required, which could be assembled using such a technique, as well as the manipulation and assembly of biological tissues directly.

The sensor hub in all its glory, sensor itself on top, standing on 3D-printed feet, and the PCB on the bottom

Hacker-Friendly And Elegant Air Quality Sensor Hub

February 27, 2023 by 9 Comments

Ever wanted an indoor environment sensor that’s dead simple yet a complete package? That’s the anotter-sensor-hub project from [Jana Marie], designed for the Sensirion SEN05x series sensors, with a SEN055 sensor shown in the picture above. Given such a sensor, you can measure VOCs and NOCs (Volatile and Non-Volatile Organic Compounds), as well as PM1, PM2.5, PM4 and PM10 particulate matter indices, with temperature and humidity sensing thrown in for good measure. Fully open and coupled with 3D printable stand files, this alone makes for an air quality hub fit for a hacker’s desk. That’s not all, however — this board’s elegant extensibility is a good match for the sensor’s impressive capabilities!

The PCB itself might look simple, it’s simply an ESP32 and some supporting circuitry required. But you’ll notice there’s also a trove of connector footprints for different interfaces; whatever else you might want to add to your sensor hub, whether it connects through I2C, SPI or PWM, you can! As usual, the sensor itself is the most expensive part of such a project — the boards themselves are around $5 USD apiece fully assembled, but one sensor-included hub will set you back roughly $42 USD. That said, it’s a great value for the price, and the trove of sensing data you can get might just more than pay for itself in quality-of-life improvements you make. Of course, everything is open-source and comes as a complete packages for you to start using. The firmware, KiCad files, 3D holder and even Grafana dashboard files can be found on GitHub.

Such air quality sensor platforms have been getting more and more popular, and hackers have been paying attention. Having a full open-source package like this at our disposal is amazing. If you’re looking for a cheaper “baby’s first air quality sensor”, drop by your local IKEA — there’s a way less featureful but quite cheap sensor that you can equip with an ESP8266, perhaps, even on a custom PCB.

A Milliwatt Of DOOM

February 26, 2023 by 36 Comments

The seminal 1993 first-person shooter from id Software, DOOM, has become well-known as a test of small computer platforms. We’ve seen it on embedded systems far and wide, but we doubt we’ve ever seen it consume as little power as it does on a specialized neural network processor. The chip in question is a Syntiant NDP200, and it’s designed to be the always-on component listening for the wake word or other trigger in an AI-enabled IoT device.

DOOM running on as little as a milliwatt of power makes for an impressive PR stunt at a trade show, but perhaps more interesting is that the chip isn’t simply running the game, it’s also playing it. As a neural network processor it contains the required smarts to learn how to play the game, and in the simple circular level it’s soon picking off the targets with ease.

We’ve not seen any projects using these chips as yet, which is hardly surprising given their niche marketplace. It is however worth noting that there is a development board for the lower-range sibling chip NDP101, which sells for around $35 USD. Super-low-power AI is within reach.

A person holds a bundle of white, black, and blue wires. The left hand side of the wires are wrapped with black tape. The wires are inside a wire wrapping machine with a grey plastic "C" which rotates inside seven small pulleys. A large pulley in the background drives three of the pulleys to rotate the "C" around and wrap the wires with tape from the spool attached to the "C."

DIY Tool Makes Wrapping Wiring Harnesses A Breeze

February 26, 2023 by 17 Comments

If you’re making a lot of wiring harnesses, wrapping them can become a bit of a drag. [Well Done Tips] wanted to make this process easier and built a wiring harness wrapping machine.

The “C” shape of this wrapping machine means that you can wrap wires that are still attached at one or both ends, as you don’t have to pull the wires all the way through the machine. The plastic “C” rotates inside a series of pulleys with three of them driven by a belt attached to an electric motor. A foot pedal actuates the motor and speed is controlled by a rotary dial on the motor controller board.

Since this is battery powered, you could wrap wires virtually anywhere without needing to be near a wall outlet. This little machine seems like it would be really great if you need to wrap a ton of wire and shouldn’t be too complicated to build. Those are some of our favorite hacks.

If you’re wanting more wire harness fun, try this simple online wiring harness tool or see how the automotive industry handles harnesses.

Continue reading “DIY Tool Makes Wrapping Wiring Harnesses A Breeze” →