I’ll See Your Seven-Segment Mechanical Display And Raise You To 16 Segments

October 8, 2022 by Dan Maloney 6 Comments

Mechanical multi-segment displays have become quite a thing lately, and we couldn’t be more pleased about it. The degree of mechanical ingenuity needed to make these things not only work but look good while doing it never ceases to amaze us, especially as the number of segments increases. So we submit this over-the-top 16-segment mechanical display (Nitter) for your approval.

The original tweet by [Kango Suzuki] doesn’t have a lot of detail, especially if you can’t read Japanese, but we did a little digging and found the video shown below. It shows a lot more detail on how this mechanism works, as well as some of the challenges that cropped up while developing it. Everything is 3D printed, and flipping the state of each of the 16 segments is accomplished with a rack-and-pinion mechanism, with the pinions printed right into each two-sided cylindrical segment. The racks are connected to pushrods that hit a punch card inserted into a slot in the rear of the display. The card has holes corresponding to the pattern to be displayed; when it’s pushed home, the card activates a mechanism that slides all the racks that line up with holes and flips their segments.

This isn’t the first multi-segment mechanical masterpiece from [Kango Suzuki] that we’ve featured, of course. This wooden seven-segment display works with cams rather than punch cards, but you can clearly see the hoe the earlier mechanism developed into the current work. Both are great, and we’re looking forward to the next segment count escalation in the mechanical display wars.

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Mommy, Where Do Ideas Come From?

October 8, 2022 by Elliot Williams 38 Comments

We wrote up an astounding old use of technology – François Willème’s 3D scanning and modeling apparatus from 1861, over 150 years ago. What’s amazing about this technique is that it used absolutely cutting-edge technology for the time, photography, and the essence of a technique still used today in laser-line 3D scanners, or maybe even more closely related to the “bullet time” effect.

This got me thinking of how Willème could have possibly come up with the idea of taking 24 simultaneous photographs, tracing the outline in wood, and then re-assembling them radially into a 3D model. And all of this in photography’s very infancy.

But Willème was already a sculptor, and had probably seen how he could use photos to replace still models in the studio, at least to solidify proportions. And he was probably also familiar with making cameos, where the profile was often illuminated from behind and carved, often by tracing shadows. From these two, you could certainly imagine his procedure, but there’s still an admirable spark of genius at work.

Could you have had that spark without the existence of photography? Not really. Tracing shadows in the round is impractical unless you can fix them. The existence of photography enabled this idea, and countless others, to come into existence.

That’s what I think is neat about technology, and the sharing of new technological ideas. Oftentimes they are fantastic in and of themselves, like photography indubitably was. But just as often, the new idea is a seed for more new ideas that radiate outward like ripples in a pond.

[Tom Stanton] Builds An Osprey

October 8, 2022 by Dan Maloney 20 Comments

The V-22 Osprey is an aircraft like no other. The tiltrotor multirole military aircraft makes an impression wherever it goes; coincidentally, a flight of two of these beasts flew directly overhead yesterday and made a noise unlike anything we’ve ever heard before. It’s a complex aircraft that pushes the engineering envelope, so naturally [Tom Stanton] decided to build a flight-control accurate RC model of the Osprey for himself.

Sharp-eyed readers will no doubt note that [Tom] built an Osprey-like VTOL model recently to explore the basics of tiltrotor design. But his goal with this build is to go beyond the basics by replicating some of the control complexity of a full-scale Osprey, without breaking the bank. Instead of building or buying real swash plates to control the collective and cyclic pitch of the rotors, [Tom] used his “virtual swashplate” technique, which uses angled hinges and rapid changes in the angular momentum of the motors to achieve blade pitch control. The interesting part is that the same mechanism worked after adding a third blade to each rotor, to mimic the Osprey’s blades — we’d have thought this would throw the whole thing off balance. True, there were some resonance issues with the airframe, but [Tom] was able to overcome them and achieve something close to stable flight.

The video below is only the first part of his build series, but we suspect contains most of the interesting engineering bits. Still, we’re looking forward to seeing how the control mechanism evolves as the design process continues.

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A Rail Cart For The Space Conscious Passenger

October 8, 2022 by Jenny List 29 Comments

For those who live in countries where there are plenty of abandoned railways, a popular way to explore them has been by means of home made rail carts. These are usually rudimentary rail trolleys with a small internal combustion engine, and a host of fascinating videos of them can be found online. Such a trolley has one disadvantage though — it’s not the most compact of devices. [Cato] has come up with a rail cart that’s extremely portable by replacing the engine with the guts of a pair of hoverboards.

The chassis of the machine is made from aluminium extrusion, and its deck from plywood. The wheels are the stock hoverboard wheels with flat flanges applied, which while they don’t have the ideal flange profile of a rail wheel are good enough to keep the thing on track. Finally to control the thing a rather stylish little 3D printed single-axis joystick serves as a combined throttle and brake.

Those of us who hail from places where abandoned railways have their track speedily ripped up can only gaze in envy and imagine speeding along the rails on one of these. The build starts with a warning never to use one of these on an active track, but should you wish to drive a real train there are plenty of places to do that.

A bike computer sits on a wooden background. The back of the bike computer has a 3D printed attachment with two white translucent zip ties running through the back.

Repairing A Bike GPS With 3D Printing

October 7, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 10 Comments

We love hacks that keep gadgets out of the trash heap, and [Brieuc du Maugouër] has us covered with this 3D printable replacement mount he designed for his bike GPS.

One of the most frustrating ways a gadget can fail is when a small, but critical part of the device fails. [du Maugouër] combined a 3D printed back and four M2x6mm screws to make a robust new mount to replace the broken OEM mount on his handlebar-mounted GPS. Slots for zip tie mounting are included in case the replacement mount breaks before yet another replacement can be printed. Apparently [du Maugouër] agrees with Chief O’Brien that “in a crunch, I wouldn’t like to be caught without a second backup.” [Youtube]

It’s exciting that we’re finally in a time when 3D printed replacement parts are living up to their potential. This would be a lot easier if more manufacturers posted 3D printed design files instead of getting them pulled from 3D file platforms, but makers will find a way regardless of OEM approval.

We’ve covered a lot of bike hacks over the years including DIY Bike Computers and GPS Trackers. Do you have a project that keeps something from becoming trash or might save the world another way? There’s still time to enter the Save the World Wildcard round of the Hackaday Prize (closes October 16th).

Ceiling Fan Adds CO2 Sensor

October 7, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 18 Comments

Ceiling fans seem to be an oft-misunderstood or overlooked household appliance. As such, they seem to have missed a lot of the IoT wave. Sure, you can get smart controllers for them to plug into your home automation system of choice, but these mostly rely on temperature sensors, simple timers, or voice commands. There’s a lot more to a ceiling fan than maintaining a comfortable temperature, as [EJ] demonstrates with this smarter ceiling fan build.

A big part of the job of a ceiling fan is to improve air circulation, which can help a room from feeling “stuffy”. This feeling is usually caused by excess CO2 as a result of respiration in an area where the air is not moving enough to exhaust this gas. Not only does [EJ]’s controller make use of a temperature monitor for controlling the fan automatically, but there is also a CO2 sensor integrated to improve this aspect of air quality when needed.

The entire build is based on a Raspberry Pi Zero, and nothing needed to be changed about the ceiling fan itself for this added functionality because it already included a radio-based remote control. With some monitoring of the signals produced by the remote, the Raspberry Pi was programmed to mimic these commands when the surrounding sensors captured a condition where [EJ] would want the fan on. There’s also a manual control button as well, so the fan control is not entirely in the hands of the computer.

For a little more detailed information about this build, there’s a separate project page which details a lot of the information about the RF waveform capturing and recreation. And, if you want to take your fan to the next level, take a look at this one which focuses on building a smartphone app to control the fan instead.

PCB-Filled Dream Desk Will Only Get Cooler With Age

October 7, 2022 by Kristina Panos 27 Comments

We all have one. Maybe you’re sitting at it now, or just wishing you were — that perfect desk. You know the one — a place for everything and everything in its place, ample acreage, specialized storage, and top-notch looks. Oh, and blinkenlights. Can’t forget those.

It took four months of hard work, but [Build XYZ]’s dream desk has been finely fabricated into fruition. There’s a lot to unpack with this build, which you can appreciate after the break, but it all started with a donated up/down desk from Progressive Desk. After building the base and putting it through its body weight-driven paces, [Build XYZ] set about making the perfect top, which, as you can see, highlights an assortment of PCBs by encasing them for eternity in resin.

But don’t let your admiration stop there, because the woodworking is just as much a part of the show. In addition to the functional blinkenlights that notify [BuildXYZ] when it’s time to stop working for the day or just take a break, there’s a working wireless charger hiding among the FR4. We can’t wait to look back on this desk in 20 years or so and we also can’t wait to see how PCBs will change over the next 20 years.

This tightly-produced video is a fascinating look into the process of forever immortalizing things in resin. So much resin, in fact, that [Build XYZ] came up a gallon short during the pour and had to wait an excruciatingly long time before more resin showed up. Seeing as how you totally can’t tell at all in the final build, we have maximum respect for [Build XYZ]’s inclusion of this part in the first place, which serves as a warning to the rest of us.

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