Enzymes Make Electricity From Thin Air

March 11, 2023 by Al Williams 17 Comments

There’s an old magic trick known as the miser’s dream, where the magician appears to pull coins from thin air. Australian scientists say they can now generate electricity out of thin air with the help of some enzymes. The enzyme reacts to hydrogen in the atmosphere to generate a current.

They learned the trick from bacteria which are known to use hydrogen for fuel in inhospitable environments like Antarctica or in volcanic craters. Scientists knew hydrogen was involved but didn’t know how it worked until now.

The enzyme is very efficient and can even work on trace amounts of hydrogen. The enzyme can survive freezing and temperature up to 80 °C (176 °F). The paper seems more intent on the physical mechanisms involved, but you can tell the current generated is minuscule. We don’t expect to see air-powered cell phones anytime soon. Then again, you have to start somewhere, and who knows where this could lead?

Microbial fuel cells aren’t new, of course. If you just want lights, you can skip the electricity altogether.

Computers For Fun

March 11, 2023 by Elliot Williams 9 Comments

The last couple years have seen an incredible flourishing of the cyberdeck scene, and probably for about as many reasons as there are individual ’deck designs. Some people get really into the prop-making, some into scrapping old tech or reusing a particularly appealing case, and others simply into the customization possibilities. That’s awesome, and they’re all different motivations for making a computer that’s truly your own.

But I really like the motivation and sentiment behind [Andreas Eriksen]’s PotatoP. (Assuming that his real motivation isn’t all the bad potato puns.) This is a small microcomputer that’s built on a commonly available microcontroller, so it’s not a particularly powerful beast – hence the “potato”. But what makes up for that in my mind is that it’s running a rudimentary bare-metal OS of his own writing. It’s like he’s taken the cyberdeck’s DIY aesthetic into the software as well.

What I like most about the spirit of the project is the idea of a long-term project that’s also a constant companion. Once you get past a terminal and an interpreter – [Andreas] is using LISP for both – everything else consists of small projects that you can check off one by one, that maybe don’t take forever, and that are limited in complexity by the hardware you’re working on. A simple text editor, some graphics primitives, maybe a sound subsystem. A way to read and write files in flash. I don’t love LISP personally, but I love that it brings interactivity and independence from an external compiler, making the it possible to develop the system on the system, pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.

Pretty soon, you could have something capable, and completely DIY. But it doesn’t need to be done all at once either. With a light enough computer, and a good basic foundation, you could keep it in your backpack and play “OS development” whenever you’ve got the free time. A DIY play OS for a sandbox computing platform: what more could a nerd want?

A Fancy Connected Caliper For Not A Lot

March 11, 2023 by Jenny List 18 Comments

An essential for the engineer is a decent caliper, to measure dimensions with reasonable accuracy. Some of us have old-fashioned Vernier scales, while many up-to-date versions are electronic. When entering large numbers of dimensions into a CAD package matters can become a little tedious, so the fancier versions have connectivity for automatic reading transfer. [Mew463] didn’t want to shell out the cash for one of those, so modified a cheaper caliper with an ESP32-C3 microcontroller to provide a Bluetooth interface.

Many cheaper calipers have a handy hidden serial port, and it’s to this interface the mod is connected via a simple level shifter. The ESP and associated circuitry is mounted on a custom PCB on the back of the caliper body, with a very neatly designed case also holding a small Li-Po cell. It adds a little bulk to the instrument, but not enough to render it unusable. Whether the work required to design and build it is worth the cost saving over an off-the-shelf connected caliper is left to the reader to decide.

We’ve covered similar hacks in the past, but this one’s to a very high standard. Meanwhile if calipers are of interest to you then they’re a subject we’ve examined in some significant detail.

A Love Letter To The Sphere Computer

March 11, 2023 by Al Williams 21 Comments

[Ben Z] loves the Sphere computer, a very early entry in the personal computer boom of the mid 1970s. The 6800 CPU was unique in its day that it was a full system — at least in theory. If you could afford the whole system, you got a nice case with a keyboard and a memory-mapped display board. You can see a great video tour of the system below the break.

The Sphere suffered from a few problems, none of which were easily foreseeable by its designer. First, the 6800 didn’t get the traction that the 8080-derived CPUs did. Second, the S-100 bus would prove to be popular but that nearly always meant an 8080-type processor in practice. Third, while an all-in-one system was the right idea, it was pricey at the time, and many people would opt for something less expensive even if it had less capability. People also wanted to leverage hardware they may have already had. It was easier to imagine hooking up a surplus TeleType, for example, to a more conventional computer than to a Sphere that expected its own display hardware and keyboard.

Continue reading “A Love Letter To The Sphere Computer” →

27 Litres And 12 Cylinders, With A Practical Station Wagon Body

March 10, 2023 by Jenny List 39 Comments

If you were to name one of the most famous individual road cars in the world, what would it be? If you’re British and of a Certain Age, then it’s possible your nomination is for sale, because “The Beast”, the one-off creation of [John Dodd] using a 27-litre Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engine, is up for auction. The Late Brake Show’s [Jonny Smith] has given it a drive, and we’ve pasted the resulting video below the break.

A second-hand motor isn’t usual Hackaday fare, but it’s the manner of this car’s building which we think will draw you in. [John] originally acquired somebody’s failed project featuring not a Merlin but its de-tuned derivative intended for tanks. He solved the problem of finding a transmission able to handle the immense power, and built it up with a pretty 1970s coupe body. After a fire a few years later he commissioned a new body from a dragster manufacturer, which is the wildly period estate car you’ll see in the video. It famously originally had a Rolls-Royce Cars grille, for which he ended up in court in the 1980s as the carmaker sought successfully to have it removed.

The tale of this car is one of epic scale hackery, as there is quite simply nothing else like it. It was once the world’s most powerful road car, and remains capable of well over 200 miles per hour. Sadly we couldn’t afford to buy it even if we could fit its immense length in our parking space.

Hungry for more epic British car hackery? Have we got the roadster for you!

Continue reading “27 Litres And 12 Cylinders, With A Practical Station Wagon Body” →

The USB Protocol, Explained

March 10, 2023 by Al Williams 8 Comments

If you can explain what a USB PID, a J state, a K state, and an SOF are, you can probably stop reading now. But if you don’t know or you want a refresher, you can spend 15 minutes watching [Sine Lab’s] straightforward explanation of the USB protocol details. You can find the video below.

The motivation for this is he wants to add USB to his projects using an ATMega with a hardware USB implementation. Honestly, most of the time, you’ll just consume some premade library and get it working that way. However, understanding the terminology can help you, especially if things don’t go as planned.

Continue reading “The USB Protocol, Explained” →

Low-Power Wi-Fi Includes E-Paper Display

March 10, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 6 Comments

Designing devices that can operate in remote environments on battery power is often challenging, especially if the devices need to last a long time between charges or battery swaps. Thankfully there are some things available that make these tasks a little easier, such as e-ink or e-paper displays which only use power when making changes to the display. That doesn’t solve all of the challenges of low-power devices, but [Albertas] shows us a few other tricks with this development board.

The platform is designed around an e-paper display and is meant to be used in places where something like sensor data needs to not only be collected, but also displayed. It also uses the ESP32C3 microcontroller as a platform which is well-known for its low power capabilities, and additionally has an on-board temperature and humidity sensor. With Bluetooth included as well, the tiny device can connect to plenty of wireless networks while consuming a remarkably low 34 µA in standby.

With a platform like this that can use extremely low power when not taking measurements, a battery charge can last a surprisingly long time. And, since it is based on common components, adding even a slightly larger battery would not be too difficult and could greatly extend this capability as well. But, we have seen similar builds running on nothing more than a coin cell, so doing so might only be necessary in the most extreme of situations.