Circular Binary Clock Uses The Power To Tell Time

November 25, 2022 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

Should a clock be round? Depends on the style of clock, we suppose. After all, we wouldn’t expect to see a digital clock with a round readout just for fun. But a binary clock — that’s another animal altogether. Whereas [JohnThinger] made just a few weeks back a linear binary clock using an RGB LED strip and an ATtiny, he decided it would look much better in the round.

Before you go decrying the fact that there are numbers other than 1 and 0 on the thing, those are simply the power of two by which one must multiply to get the time. And naturally, it’s done in three phases, with the yellow-green numbers representing the seconds, the pink-red representing minutes, and the blue standing for the current hour. No, the point is not to make life easier. But it’s a good-looking clock, no?

Just as before, an ATtiny85 is the brain, with an RTC chip and an oscillator to keep time. But now, the display involves negative space 3D-printed numbers and an RGB LED ring. Be sure to check it out after the break.

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Hackaday Podcast 194: FPV Contest, Seven Words, Lots Of Coffee, And Edible Drones

November 25, 2022 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos fumbled through setting up Mumble on Kristina’s new-ish computer box before hitting record and talking turkey. First off, we’ve got a fresh new contest going on, and this time it’s all about the FPVs. Then we see if Kristina can stump Elliot once again with a sound from her vast trove of ancient technologies.

Then there’s much ado about coffee roasters of all stripes, and you know we’re both coffee enthusiasts. We have many words to say about the subject, but none of them are any of the 7+ dirty ones that the FCC would probably rather we didn’t. Finally, we take a look at a bike frame that’s totally nuts, a clock that seemingly works via magic, and a drone made of rice cakes. So find something to nibble on, and check out this week’s episode!

Download the podcast for safe keeping.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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When Pi Supply Falls Short, Thin Clients Stand Tall For Home Automation And Low Power Computing

November 25, 2022 by Ryan Flowers 80 Comments

Do you need a cheap, small computer for a low power computing project? Historically, many of us would reach straight for a Raspberry Pi, even if we didn’t absolutely need the GPIO. But with prices elevated and supplies in the dumps, [Andreas Spiess] decided that it was time to look for alternatives to now-expensive Pi’s which you can see in the video below the break.

Many simply use the Pi for its software ecosystem, its lower power requirements, and diminutive size. [Andreas] has searched eBay, looking for thin PC clients that can be had for as little as $10-15. A few slightly more expensive units were also chosen, and in the video some comparisons are made. How do these thin clients compare to a Pi for power consumption, computing power, and cost? The results may surprise you!

Software is another issue, since many Pi projects rely on Raspbian, a Pi-specific ARM64 Linux distribution. Since Raspbian is based on Debian, [Andreas] chose it as a basis for experimentation. He thoughtfully included such powerful software as Proxmox for virtualization, IOTstack, and Home Assistant, walking the viewer through each step of running Home Assistant on x86-64 hardware and noting the differences between the Linux distributions.

All in all, if you’ve ever considered stepping out of the Pi ecosystem and into general Linux computing, this tutorial will be an excellent starting point. Of course [Andreas] isn’t the first to bark up this tree, and we featured another thin client running Klipper for your 3D printer earlier this month. Have you found your own perfect Pi replacement in these Pi-less times? Let us know in the comments below.

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Unlocking A Locked-Down Inverter

November 25, 2022 by Jenny List 21 Comments

There was a time when a mains inverter was a heavy, expensive, and not particularly powerful item, but thanks to switch-mode technology we are now spoiled for choice. Most inverters still work with 12 V or 24 V supplies though, so when [Chris Jones] was looking for one to run from 36 V batteries, he found a limited supply. Sadly the Greenworks model he ended up with was affordable, but locked to a particular battery by means of a serial line between battery and inverter. Buy the special battery? No, he did what any hacker would do, and modified the inverter to do without it.

Tracing the serial link led to a mystery chip, probably a microcontroller but without available data. It in turn had a line to an 8051 derivative that seemed to be the brains of the operation. Acting on a hunch he pulled down the line with a resistor, and as if by magic, a working inverter appeared.

As you might expect, here at Hackaday we abhor such tricks by manufacturers, and thus any moves to circumvent them are to be applauded. It would be extremely interesting were anyone to have the Greenworks battery to subject to some reverse engineering of the profile.

Meanwhile if this is a little complex for you, there is a much simpler way to make a rough and ready inverter.

Jansen's linkage, paper model of a bar linkage

Making Paper Strandbeesten

November 25, 2022 by Anne Ogborn 15 Comments

We love the artistry of paper mechanisms. Simple tools and techniques creating humor, beauty, and amazement.

[Federico Tobon] from [Wolfcat Workshop] makes amazing automata, crosses between cut paper art, origami, and traditional carved wood automata. He’s put out a useful new video on making linkages in paper parts.

In this short video, [Federico] shows us how to make a paper version of the leg mechanism for [Theo Jansen]’s classic Strandbeest, which we’ve covered in many variations.

Rotating joints in paper automata are sometimes done with a mechanical fastener like a post screw, but it violates the simplicity of the affair and often looks clunky. [Federico] uses a simple self fastener. A 5 mm hole in one part mates with two “flaps” in the other part. He’s made a separate video covering how to make the fastenings. He’s using a paper crafter’s Cricut-type machine to cut the parts. Pretty cool.

We’ve covered lots of other cool stuf from [Wolfcat Workshop]. If you want more of his automata eye candy, check out Simple Automata Extravaganza.

Squish That Stack With Rampart

November 24, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 18 Comments

[P B Richards] and [Aaron Flin] were bemoaning the resource hunger of modern JavaScript environments and planned to produce a system that was much stingier with memory and CPU, that would fit better on lower-end platforms. Think Nginx, NodeJS, and your flavour of database and how much resource that all needs to run properly. Now try wedge that lot onto a Raspberry Pi Zero. Well, they did, creating Rampart: a JavaScript-based complete stack development environment.

The usual web applications have lots of tricks to optimise for speed, but according to the developers, Rampart is still pretty fast. Its reason for existence is purely about resource usage, and looking at a screen grab, the Rampart HTTP server weighs in at less than 10 MB of RAM. It appears to support a decent slew of technologies, such as HTTPS, WebSockets, SQL search, REDIS, as well as various utility and OS functions, so shouldn’t be so lightweight as to make developing non-trivial applications too much work. One interesting point they make is that in making Rampart so frugal when deployed onto modern server farms it could be rather efficient. Anyway, it may be worth a look if you have a reasonable application to wedge onto a small platform.

We’ve seen many JavaScript runtimes over the years, like this recent effort, but there’s always room for one more.

Homebrew LED Bulbs Keep Your Circadian Rhythms Steady

November 24, 2022 by Dan Maloney 18 Comments

There was a time when LED light bulbs were a premium product that commanded a premium price, mainly because of limited supply and the usual marketing tricks. But now is not that time, since you can pick up an LED bulb for a buck or two at pretty much any store. So why in the world would you go to the effort to make your own light bulb?

For [DiodeGoneWild], the answer is simple: it’s all about staying in rhythm. Circadian rhythm, that is. We all know how light toward the blue end of the spectrum is bad for our sleep cycle, since it convinces our lizard brain that dawn is at hand. But even if you pick an LED bulb with a warm, or reddish, color temperature, there’s still a lot of UV light being emitted thanks to the phosphor LEDs that are typically used in them.

[DiodeGoneWild]’s first attempt at a design, in the first video below, mostly avoids phosphor LEDs in favor of a mix of yellow, red, and yellow-green LEDs to get a warmer spectrum. He used the housing and base from an expired bulb to enclose his custom circular PCB, the fabrication of which using a hand drill as a lathe and a Dremel to machine concentric tracks in the cladding was a real treat. So was the power supply, for that matter — a dropping capacitor followed by a bridge rectifier and a filtering cap. We like the discharge resistors across the caps and the fusible resistor on the mains side — it’s nice to see safety factored in from the start. And what’s not to like about using a DVD as a makeshift spectroscope?

We see that [DiodeGoneWild] has just dropped a second design, this time in a much smaller bulb and with relatively more phosphor LEDs.

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