We’re Hiring: Come Join Us!

August 17, 2022 by 37 Comments

You wake up in the morning, and check Hackaday over breakfast. Then it’s off to work or school, where you’ve already had to explain the Jolly Wrencher to your shoulder-surfing colleagues. And then to a hackspace or back to your home lab, stopping by the skull-and-cross-wrenches while commuting, naturally. You don’t bleed red, but rather #F3BF10. It’s time we talked.

The Hackaday writing crew goes to great lengths to cover all that is interesting to engineers and enthusiasts. We find ourselves stretched a bit thin and it’s time to ask for help. Want to lend a hand while making some extra dough to plow back into your projects? We’re looking for contributors to write a few articles per week and keep the Hackaday flame burning.

Contributors are hired as private contractors and paid for each article. You should have the technical expertise to understand the projects you write about, and a passion for the wide range of topics we feature. You’ll have access to the Hackaday Tips Line, and we count on your judgement to help us find the juicy nuggets that you’d want to share with your hacker friends.

If you’re interested, please email our jobs line (jobs at hackaday dot com) and include:

  • One example article written in the voice of Hackaday. Include a banner image, at least 150 words, the link to the project, and any in-links to related and relevant Hackaday features. We need to know that you can write.
  • Details about your background (education, employment, interests) that make you a valuable addition to the team. What do you like, and what do you do?
  • Links to your blog/project posts/etc. that have been published on the Internet, if any.

What are you waiting for? Ladies and Gentlemen, start your applications!

Back To The Future Prop Can Tell When It Hits 88 MPH

August 17, 2022 by 8 Comments

Obviously, the most iconic piece of fictional hardware from the Back to the Future films is Doc Brown’s DeLorean DMC-12 time machine. But we’d have to agree with [Jason Altice] of CodeMakesItGo that the second-most memorable gadget is the modified Futaba remote control used to control the DeLorean from a distance. Now, thanks to his detailed build guide, you can build your own version of the time machine’s controller — complete with working speed readout.

Now to be clear, [Jason] isn’t claiming that his build is particularly screen accurate. It turns out that the actual transmitter used for the prop in the film, the Futaba PCM FP-T8SGA-P, has become difficult to find and expensive. But he argues that to the casual observer, most vintage Futaba transmitters are a close enough match visually. The more important part is recreating the extra gear Doc Brown bolted onto his version. Continue reading “Back To The Future Prop Can Tell When It Hits 88 MPH” →

Coils In The Road Could Charge EVs While Driving

August 17, 2022 by 131 Comments

One of the primary issues with EVs is that you need to pull over and stop to get a charge. If there isn’t a high-speed DC charger available, this can mean waiting for hours while your battery tops up.

It’s been the major bugbear of electric vehicles since they started hitting the road in real numbers. However, a new wireless charging setup could allow you to juice up on the go.

Electric Highways

Over the years, many proposals have been made to power or charge electric vehicles as they drive down the road. Many are similar to the way we commonly charge phones these days, using inductive power transfer via magnetic coils. The theory is simple. Power is delivered to coils in the roadway, and then picked up via induction by a coil on the moving vehicle.

Taking these ideas from concept into reality is difficult, though. When it comes to charging an electric vehicle, huge power levels are required, in the range of tens to hundreds of kilowatts. And, while a phone can sit neatly on top of a charging pad, EVs typically require a fair bit of ground clearance for safely navigating the road. Plus, since cars move at quite a rapid pace, an inductive charging system that could handle this dynamic condition would require huge numbers of coils buried repeatedly into the road bed. Continue reading “Coils In The Road Could Charge EVs While Driving” →

Did You See A John Deere Tractor Cracked At DEF CON?

August 17, 2022 by 6 Comments

The Internet, or at least our corner of it,  has been abuzz over the last few days with the news of a DEF CON talk by [Sick.Codes] in which he demonstrated the jailbreaking of the console computer from a John Deere tractor. Sadly we are left to wait the lengthy time until the talk is made public, and for now the most substantive information we have comes from a couple of Tweets. The first comes from [Sick.Codes] himself and shows a game of DOOM with a suitably agricultural theme, while the second is by [Kyle Wiens] and reveals the tractor underpinnings relying on outdated and un-patched operating systems.

You might ask why this is important and more than just another “Will it run DOOM” moment. The answer will probably be clear to long-term readers, and is that Deere have become the poster child for improper use of DRM to lock owners into their servicing and deny farmers the right to repair. Thus any breaches in their armor are of great interest, because they have the potential to free farmers world-wide from this unjust situation. As we’ve reported before the efforts to circumvent this have relied on cracked versions of the programming software, so this potential jailbreak of the tractor itself could represent a new avenue.

As far as we’re aware, this has so far taken place on the console modules in the lab and not in the field on a real tractor. So we’re unsure as to whether the door has been opened into the tractor’s brain, or merely into its interface. But the knowledge of which outdated software can be found on the devices will we hope lead further to what known vulnerabilities may be present, and in turn to greater insights into the machinery.

Were you in the audience at DEF CON for this talk? We’d be curious to know more. Meanwhile the Tweet is embedded below the break, for a little bit of agricultural DOOM action.

Continue reading “Did You See A John Deere Tractor Cracked At DEF CON?” →

Motorized Camera Mount Was Once A 3D Printer

August 17, 2022 by 1 Comment

If you plan on building your own motorized camera mount, a 3D printer can definitely be of help. But in this case, [dslrdiy] didn’t use it for printing out parts — finding himself with little use for an old printer built from scrap back in the day, he decided to repurpose it and turn it into a remote controlled DSLR camera mount that’s capable of panning, tilting, and sliding.

The main goal was to not only salvage the stepper motors and controller board, in this case an Arduino Mega 2560 with RAMPS board, but also to keep the original firmware itself in use. For this to work, [dslrdiy] redesigned the mechanical parts that would allow him to perform the different camera movements using regular G-Code instructions operating the X, Y, and Z axes to pan, tilt, and slide respectively.

The G-Code instructions themselves are sent via UART by an accompanying control box housing an ESP32. This allows the camera mount to operated by either via joystick and buttons, or via serial Bluetooth connection, for example from a phone. The ESP32 system also allows to set predefined positions to move to, along with speed and other motor tweaks. You can see it all demonstrated in the video after the break.

While there’s simpler solutions for camera mounts out there, this is certainly an interesting approach. It also shows just how far desktop 3D printers have come if we already find the older generations repurposed like this. For more of [dslrdiy]’s work with 3D printers and cameras, check out his customizable lens caps.

Continue reading “Motorized Camera Mount Was Once A 3D Printer” →

USB-C Charging Mod Brings In The Juice

August 16, 2022 by 13 Comments

By now we’re well under way with the consolidation of low-voltage power supplies under the USB-C standard, and the small reversible connector has become the de facto way to squirt some volts into our projects. But for all this standardization there are still a few places where the harmony of a unified connector breaks down, and things don’t work quite the way they are supposed to. One such case has occupied [James Ide] — devices which will accept power from a USB-A to USB-C cable, but not from a USB-C to USB-C one. His solution? A small flexible PCB upgrade.

The problem lies with how different power supplies and peripherals identify each other, and quite likely in device manufacturers skimping on a few components here and there. A compliant USB-C power supply expects to see pull-down resistors on the data lines, and will thus refuse to serve power to devices that don’t possess them. Meanwhile the USB-A supply will quite happily serve juice without such checks, which is what the manufacturer is relying on. The solution is a tiny flexible PCB with the resistors, designed to be retrofitted behind a USB-C socket. On one hand it’s probably one of the simplest circuits we’ve ever shown you, and on the other it’s a cleverly designed solution to the issue at hand.

If the nitty-gritty of USB-C interests you, then we’ve taken a much closer look in the past.

Thanks to [Andrea] for the tip.

SquareBoi Is The DIY Game Boy Cart You’ve Always Wanted

August 16, 2022 by 16 Comments

Running unofficial code on a Nintendo Game Boy has long been a solved problem. However, you still need a way to get that code onto the handheld console. The Squareboi cartridge promises to do just that, as created by [ALXCO-Hardware].

It’s a well-featured cartridge, with up to 4 MB of ROM storage onboard. It also features a ferromagnetic RAM part for savegame storage, which doesn’t need a battery to hang on to your precious data. It’s designed to be compatible with the vast majority of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, with efforts made to support the most common mapping schemes. It can be built using entirely through-hole components, and is readily programmable via an Arduino.

For those eager to tinker with code on the Game Boy, diving into the Squareboi is a great way to get closer to the bare metal and understand what’s really going on at the low level. Those interested in building their own can get all the relevant details over on Github.

We’ve seen similar hacks before, too, like the cartridge that brought Wikipedia to the humble Nintendo handheld. If you’ve been whipping up your own Nintendo hacks, be sure to drop us a line!