Robotics Class Is Open

January 19, 2025 by 5 Comments

If you are like us, you probably just spin up your own code for a lot of simple projects. But that’s wasteful if you are trying to do anything serious. Take a robot, for example. Are you using ROS (Robot Operating System)? If not — or even if you are — check out [Janne Karttunene] and the University of Eastern Finland’s open-source course Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials.

The material is on GitHub. Rather than paraphrase, here’s the description from the course itself:

This course is designed to give you hands-on experience with the basics of robotics using ROS 2 and Gazebo simulation. The exercises focus on the Andino robot from Ekumen and are structured to gradually introduce you to ROS 2 and Docker.

No prior experience with ROS 2 or Docker is needed, and since everything runs through Docker, you won’t need to install ROS 2 on your system beforehand. Along the way, you’ll learn essential concepts like autonomous navigation and mapping for mobile robots. All the practical coding exercises are done in Python.

Topics include SLAM, autonomous navigation, odometry, and path planning. It looks like it will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in robotics or anything else you might do with ROS.

If you want a quick introduction to ROS, we can help. We’ve seen a number of cool ROS projects over the years.

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Hackaday Links: January 19, 2025

January 19, 2025 by 8 Comments

This week, we witnessed a couple of space oopsies as both Starship and New Glenn suffered in-flight mishaps on the same day. SpaceX’s Starship was the more spectacular, with the upper stage of the seventh test flight of the full stack experiencing a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” thanks to a fire developing in the aft section of the stage somewhere over the Turks and Caicos islands, about eight and a half minutes after takeoff from Boca Chica. The good news is that the RUD happened after first-stage separation, and that the Super Heavy booster was not only able to safely return to the pad but also made another successful “chopsticks” landing on the tower. Sorry, that’s just never going to get old.

On the Bezos side of the billionaire rocket club, the maiden flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn ended with the opposite problem. The upper stage reached orbit, but the reusable booster didn’t make it back to the landing barge parked off the Bahamas. What exactly happened isn’t clear yet, but judging by the telemetry the booster was coming in mighty fast, which may indicate that the engines didn’t restart fully and the thing just broke up when it got into the denser part of the atmosphere.

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Dillo Turns 25, And Releases A New Version

January 19, 2025 by 13 Comments

The chances are overwhelming, that you are reading this article on a web browser powered by some form of the Blink or WebKit browser engines as used by Google, Apple, and many open source projects, or perhaps the Gecko engine as used by Firefox. At the top end of the web browser world there are now depressingly few maintained browser engines — we think to the detriment of web standards evolution.

Moving away from the big players though, there are several small browser projects which eschew bells and whistles for speed and compactness, and we’re pleased to see that one of the perennial players has released a new version as it passes its quarter century.

Dillo describes itself as ” a fast and small graphical web browser”, and it provides a basic window on the web with a tiny download and the ability to run on very low-end hardware. Without JavaScript and other luxuries it sometimes doesn’t render a site as you’d see it in Chrome or Firefox, but we’re guessing many users would relish some escape from the web’s cycle-sucking garbage. The new version 3.2.0 brings bug fixes, as well as math formula rendering, and navigation improvements.

The special thing about Dillo is that this is a project which came back from the dead. We reported last year how a developer resurrected it after a previous release back in 2015, and it seems that for now at least it has a healthy future. So put it on your retro PC, your original Raspberry Pi, or your Atari if you have one, and try it on your modern desktop if you need reminding just how fast web browsing can be.

This isn’t the only interesting browser project on the block, we’re also keeping an eye on Ladybird, which is aiming for those big players rather than simplicity like Dillo.

Thanks [Feinfinger] for the tip.

Bambu Connect’s Authentication X.509 Certificate And Private Key Extracted

January 19, 2025 by 123 Comments

Hot on the heels of Bambu Lab’s announcement that it would be locking down all network access to its X1-series 3D printers with new firmware, the X.509 certificate and private key from the Bambu Connect application have now been extracted by [hWuxH]. This application was intended to be the sole way for third-party software to send print jobs to Bambu Lab hardware as we previously reported.

The Bambu Connect app is a fairly low-effort Electron-based affair, with some attempt at obfuscation and encryption, but not enough to keep prying eyes out. The de-obfuscated main.js file can be found here (archived), with the certificate and private key clearly visible. These are used to encrypt HTTP traffic with the printer, and is the sole thing standing in the way of tools like OrcaSlicer talking with authentication-enabled Bambu Lab printers.

As for what will be the next steps by Bambu Lab, it’s now clear that security through obfuscation is not going to be very effective here. While playing whack-a-mole with (paying) users who are only interested in using their hardware in the way that they want is certainly an option, this might be a wake-up call for the company that being more forthcoming with their userbase would be in anyone’s best interest.

We await Bambu Lab’s response with bated breath.

An Instant Gratification Game Boy Printer

January 19, 2025 by 7 Comments

When the Game Boy Printer was released back in 1998, being able to produce a hard-copy of your Pokémon diploma or your latest Game Boy Camera snapshot at the touch of a button was was pretty slick indeed. But in our modern paperless society, the GB Printer somehow sticks out as even more archaic than the other add-on’s for Nintendo’s iconic handheld. Even among the folks who are still proudly playing the games that support the Printer, nobody actually wants to print anything out — although that doesn’t mean they don’t want to see the images.

The TinyGB Printer, developed by [Raphaël BOICHOT] and [Brian KHUU], could be considered something of a Game Boy Non-Printer. Powered by the RP2040 Zero development board, this open source hardware device plugs into your Game Boy and is picked up by all the games as a legitimate Printer. But instead of cranking out a little slip of thermal paper once you hit the button, the image is displayed in all its 240×240 glory on a 1.3 inch TFT display mounted to the top of the board.

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DIY Handheld Is An Emulation Powerhouse

January 19, 2025 by 10 Comments

If you’re into handheld gaming, you’ve got a wide array of hardware options to choose from these days that are capable of running everything from console classics to full-fledged PC titles. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t enterprising gamers out there who are still building their own custom handhelds —  like the Retro Lite CM5.

For this project, [StonedEdge], [GinKage], and [notime2d8] set out to create a powerful enough handheld that could emulate games spanning the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and 3DS eras. Using a Radxa Rk3588s compute module as a base, the build navigates the design and construction of things like the carrier board, custom controllers, and the enclosure.

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Motorized Coil Tunes Your Ham Antenna On A Budget

January 19, 2025 by 11 Comments

When it comes to amateur radio, one size definitely does not fit all. That’s especially true with antennas, which need to be just the right size for the band you’re working, lest Very Bad Things happen to your expensive radio. That presents a problem for the ham who wants the option to work whichever band is active, and doubly so if portable operation is desired.

Of course, there are commercial solutions to this problem, but they tend to be expensive. Luckily [Øystein (LB8IJ)] seems to have found a way around that with this low-cost homebrew motorized antenna coil, which is compatible with the Yaesu Automatic Tuning Antenna System. ATAS is supported by several Yaesu transceivers, including the FT-891 which [Øystein] favors for field operations. ATAS sends signals up the feedline to a compatible antenna, which then moves a wiper along a coil to change the electrical length of the antenna, allowing it to resonate on the radio’s current frequency.

The video below details [Øystein]’s implementation of an ATAS-compatible tuning coil, mainly focusing on the mechanical and electrical aspects of the coil itself, which takes up most of the room inside a 50-mm diameter PVC tube. The bore of the air-core coil has a channel that guides a wiper, which moves along the length of the coil thanks to a motor-driven lead screw. [Øystein] put a lot of work into the wiper, to make it both mechanically and electrically robust. He also provides limit switches to make sure the mechanism isn’t over-driven.

There’s not much detail yet on how the control signals are detected, but a future video on that subject is promised. We’re looking forward to that, but in the meantime, the second video below shows [Øystein] using the tuner in the field, with great results.

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