Publish Or Perish: Data Storage And Civilization

October 13, 2022 by 120 Comments

Who do you think of when you think of ancient civilizations? Romans? Greeks? Chinese? India? Egyptians?  What about the Scythians, the Muisca, Gana, or the Kerma? You might not recognize that second group as readily because they all didn’t have writing systems. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for the Etruscans, the Minoans, or the inhabitants of Easter Island where they wrote, but no one remembers how to read their writing. Even the Egyptians were mysterious until the discovery of the Rosetta stone. We imagine that an author writing in Etruscan didn’t think that no one would be able to read the writing in the future–they probably thought they were recording their thoughts for all eternity. Hubris? Maybe, but what about our documents that are increasingly stored as bits somewhere?

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Imagining A Dune-accurate Fremen Thumper

October 13, 2022 by 30 Comments

Never underestimate the power of fandom to obsess over the smallest details of its chosen canon. We say that with all due respect, of course, as some of the builds that result are really cool, like this working Fremen thumper from the Dune universe.

If you aren’t up to speed on [Frank Herbert]’s sci-fi epic, the Fremen are a warrior race that populates the sands of the desert planet Arrakis, which is inhabited by giant sandworms. The worms are attracted to vibrations, and thumpers are supposed to be mechanical devices set into the sand to lure worms. Thumpers are only vaguely described in the text, and have been imagined to varying degrees of success in the filmed versions of the story.

[Attoparsec] decided to take a stab at a working version, with the twist of making it plausible within what’s known about the Fremen in the stories. He settled on a pneumatic drive, which seems like something the Fremen would use. Using compressed CO2 cartridges, he discovered that it’s far easier to make a high-speed pneumatic vibrator than it is to make a piston move slowly up and down. Several iterations were needed to get to a mechanism capable of the more stately movements seen in any of the film versions of the story, and even then the thumping seems a bit fast for our liking. The triggering mechanism was very cool, though, and somewhat unexpected — [Herbert] describes “lighting the candle” to trigger a thumper, which led to the use of a thermal pressure relief valve and a fuse.

The video below goes over the design and build in some detail, as well as demonstrates the thumper in action with a clever cosplay bit. Hats off to [Attoparsec] for this dive down the fandom rabbit hole, maybe a faithful version of the “pain box” will be next up on the project list.

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2022 Cyberdeck Contest: Picking The Best Of The Best

October 13, 2022 by 15 Comments

Given how many incredible builds we’ve covered over the last couple of years, we knew that an official Cyberdeck Contest would certainly receive some impressive entries. But never in our wildest dreams could we have predicted that more than 100 decks would end up crossing the finish line, or that of them, the vast majority would be never-before-seen designs. In fact, the response to this contest was so overwhelming that the judging process took far longer than we originally anticipated.

Ultimately, we decided that there were simply too many phenomenal builds entered into the contest to award $150 Digikey spending sprees to just three of them. So as an added bonus, we’ve rustled up some $50 Tindie gift certificates that will go to the four special category honorable mentions.

With that, let’s take a look at the cyberdecks that took top honors as decided by our panel of judges.

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Tiny Thin Client Is Small But Compatible

October 13, 2022 by 10 Comments

We were impressed with [moononournation’s] tiny thin client project. It claims to use an Arduino, but as you might guess it is using the Arduino software along with a network-enabled microcontroller like an ESP32. The impressive part is that it is standards-compliant and implements VNC’s RFB protocol.

The original coding for RFB on Arduino is from [Links2004] and armed with that, the thin client is probably easier to create than you would guess. However, this project wanted to use a larger screen and found that it led to certain problems. In particular, the original code had a 320×240 display. This project was to use an 800×480 display, but with the limits on the ESP32, the frame rate possible would be under 7 frames per second. The answer was to combine a 16-bit parallel interface with better compression back to the VNC server.

The little keyboard is probably not very practical, but it is compact. That would be another easy thing to modify. Currently, the keyboard uses I2C, but it would be straightforward to change things up. This would be a worthy base to build a bigger project on top. A 3D printed enclosure would be nice, too.

We’ve seen a number of projects built around commercial thin clients. Some from defunct businesses are good sources for obscure parts, too.

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3D Printed Sorter Separates Spare Hex Nuts With A Shake

October 13, 2022 by 14 Comments

Got a pile of mixed hex nuts? Sort them in no time by printing [jonafriendj]’s nut sorter, which has options for pretty much any nut size you’d be after (it’s labeled metric, but actually includes Imperial sizes as well.)

Something to admire about the design is the handy little raised labels on each of the sieves, and the fact that all the parts print entirely without supports. Designing a part to play to a manufacturing method’s strengths (and avoid its weaknesses) is good DFM, or Design for Manufacturing.

With 3D printing being the boon that it is to workshops and hobbyists everywhere, it certainly pays to strive for good DFM, especially for designs meant to be shared with others. Sometimes good DFM takes a page from other manufacturing methods like injection molding, and we end up with things like using crush ribs on printed parts.

Want to see a demonstration of [jonafriendj]’s nut sorting design? Check out the short video embedded below the page break. If that leaves you wanting, take a look at a motorized, automated DIY solution.

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USB Power Isolator Keeps Smoke In

October 12, 2022 by 17 Comments

Anyone who’s done an electronics project knows the most important part of any good design is making sure to keep the magic smoke inside of all of the components. There are a lot of ways to make sure the smoke stays in there, but one of the most important is making sure that the power supply is isolated. If you’re using a USB port on a computer as your power source, though, it can be a little more complicated to isolate it from the computer.

The power supply is based around a small transformer with a set of diodes to act as a rectifier. Of course, while a transformer is great at isolating power supplies, it isn’t much good at DC. That’s what the ATtiny microcontroller is for. It handles the high-speed switching of the MOSFETs, which drive the transformer and handle some power regulation. There are two different power supplies created as part of this project as well — the first generates +5V much like a normal USB plug would have, and the other creates both +5V and -5V. It will be important not to mix these two up, or that tricky blue smoke may escape.

The project page goes into extensive details on the operation of the device, so if electrical theory is of interest, this will definitely be worth a read. Isolating a valuable computer from a prototype circuit is certainly important, but if you’re looking for a way to isolate a complete USB connection, look at this build which includes isolation for a USB to FTDI adapter.

Watermelon CNC Uses Lazy Susan

October 12, 2022 by 27 Comments

It is the time of year when a lot of people in certain parts of the world carve pumpkins. [Gonkee] is carving a watermelon, which we assume is similar. He decided to make a CNC machine to do the carving for him. The unusual part is the use of two lazy Susans to make a rotary carving machine. You can see the result in the video below.

The hardware is clever and there is software that lets you do drawings, although we were hoping for something that would process gcode or slice STL. That would be a worthy add-on project. There were a few iterations required before the Melon Carver 3000 worked satisfactorily. Seeing a carving tool operating on two circles gives us a lot of ideas. We aren’t sure how sturdy the mounts are, so don’t plan on carving aluminum without some changes, but we suspect it is possible.

Then again, a laser head mounted on the frame would have probably made short work of the melon, and wouldn’t require much mechanical stiffness. It would, however, take a little effort to keep it in focus. So many ideas to try!

Watermelon is a popular hacking medium, apparently. There’s even one that holds a GameBoy.